Seeing is Believing
by Cheers
Summary: Finished! House saves a patient but not in the usual manner. The results might prove fatal.
1. Chapter 1

Welcome to my newest story. I'd very much like to thank my beta-readers Allie and Gail. Without them this story would be even more stupid.

Seeing is Believing (Part 1)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

Saturday, July 7th, 08:22 am

The free clinic at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital was in full swing as he entered the front doors. The only thing that sucked more than Saturday clinic duty was mandatory Saturday clinic duty. Cuddy said he owed her. No. Correction. She owned him or, more precisely, she owned his ass.

Okay, so the only thing that sucked more than having someone else own your ass was knowing that they did, for whatever the reason, truly own your ass. This Saturday was not going to shape up as one of those memorable weekends he dreamed of in his youth. The two vicodin tabs that he downed in lieu of breakfast weren't going to be enough to placate him for that fact either and he was contemplating taking another one when he heard her telltale heel clips coming up behind him. No one walked with quite the same feminine swagger mixed with self-righteousness as the Medical Director of Princeton-Plainsboro, Dr. Lisa Cuddy.

Rounding to face the owner of his ass for the day, he greeted her with all the human warmth he could muster. "Dr. Cuddy. Fine morning for a little crotch-rot diving, isn't it?"

"You're late." Lisa replied, not even attempting to keep the angry edge off her tone. She had specifically told him that late was not an option on Saturdays. The clinic was busiest on weekends, the days the poor who did manage to hold down jobs had an opportunity to seek medical care without placing their jobs in jeopardy. Even someone as misanthropic as House should recognize something so obvious. Come on! She mentally shook herself. This is House she was thinking about. There was nothing about common human endeavor that mattered less to Gregory House than the mundane nature of simple survival in the lowest classes of American society. Unless, that is, it somehow impacted a case he was interested in. Say what you will about House, he knew and understood and used human nature in ways that seemed more like abracadabra than practicing medicine when it really mattered. But then, that was what made House … well … House. Greg House was perhaps the greatest diagnostician in medicine today. He, for lack of a better metaphor, had made a name for himself – correction, an _international_ name for himself – as the modern day Sherlock Holmes of medical mysteries, complete with drug habit. The only thing he lacked, currently, was a Dr. Watson. Up until six days ago he had had three doctors Watson. Now, sans sidekicks, House was becoming a royal pain in the proverbial you-know-where. And that metaphor only worked if the ass in question was as big as the Garden State itself. House had alienated his subordinates. He had fired one of them and lost the other two to attrition through resignation. Considering that this same House had just barely managed to keep his license after being accused of illegal possession of narcotics, and that Lisa had lied for him only two months ago, and that he had promised to work more hours in the clinic to pay her back for perjuring herself to save him, and for being the world's most obnoxious medical practitioner known to man, he wasn't performing too well this morning. As if she had any right to be surprised. New Jersey may have granted House a license to practice medicine - and failed to rescind that license - but it didn't grant him the right to annoy her more than usual this morning. His glib welcome was pushing her beyond her normal state of annoyance with her least favorite if most famous (and therefore beneficial to the stature of her facility) staff member. He was driving her to new heights of frustration far too early in the day.

"Your shift started", she looked at her watch, "twenty-four minutes ago."

"My watch stopped," House replied almost instantly, turning from that ever-present look of frustration on his boss's face and taking a cursory glance at the stack of charts on the corner of the clinic nurse's desk. It was beginning to look like a five or six pill session in the clinic, and the next required dose was becoming more and more urgent the longer Cuddy glared at him.

Grabbing his left wrist, Lisa noted the perfectly timed tick of the perfectly functioning second hand in his Seiko. "Funny," she said dryly, "it seems to be working now."

"This is my dress watch," he replied, pulling his arm from her grasp. "Thank God I had a spare. I might not have made it at all."

"You can add an extra thirty minutes to the end of your shift to make up for it," she informed him.

"Slave driver," House retorted with mock indignation. "Your heartless rejection of my perfectly plausible explanation for tardiness doesn't go well with your cleavage-revealing outfit. Maybe your breasts are putting too much pressure on that portion of your anatomy." To prove his point, he leaned forward slightly and gazed appreciatively down the front of her blouse.

Without flinching, Cuddy grabbed the top chart from the pile and slapped his chest with it. "Exam room two," she ordered, then turned on her heels and headed for her office. House watched her as she went, amazed at the way her lab coat draped around those same hips that had fascinated him over twenty-five years ago while they were undergraduates.

"Shouldn't that be twenty-four minutes?" He yelled after her.

Without turning around, Lisa replied, "I added on a fine for lying." She grinned slightly and held up her hand to ward off the comment she knew was forming on his lips without even looking. "And if you say one more word I'll start upping the fine by five minutes for every syllable you utter." She thought she heard rather than saw him snap his mouth shut, and that brought on the first full smile of her morning. Getting the upper hand on Greg House was almost as satisfying as sex. Not quite, but almost.

House blew out his breath in frustration and made his way to Exam Room 2. His backpack, slung across his left shoulder so that his right hand could more easily handle his cane, slapped into the door as he entered. He moved across the room in the halting gait that had become as normal for him as breathing since his surgery seven years ago. The surgical removal of the dead muscle that had resulted from the critical misdiagnosis of an infarction causing embolus in his right thigh had changed his life. The cane and chronic pain in his leg had become so much a part of who he was that they practically defined him to the not-so-casual observer. For those closest to him they became just another piece of a puzzle that never quite added up. House was complicated. Unfortunately, the cases he would see today would not be. With a mental sigh, he dropped the pack on the floor in the far corner and turned to the patient sitting on the exam table, a young man of about twenty with a scared expression on his face who was gripping the top of his pants tightly and staring at House's cane.

House moved to the exam stool, sat down, and then hung his cane from the instrument table. "Don't worry," he said as he let go of his cane to let it swing slightly by the handle as gravity forced the tip toward the earth's core, "I only use it on patients who lie to me."

The resultant nervous swallow he got from his first patient of the day told House volumes. He opened the chart and glanced at the clinic nurse's note detailing the patient's main complaint. "So," House said glancing up, "it says in here that you think you have TMJ."

"Ye – yeah," the young man stammered timidly.

"Why do you think that?" House asked, looking at the patient's face and resisting the urge to ask the guy if he even knew what TMJ stood for. There was near perfect symmetry (no one but Halle Berry and Carmen Electra had a perfectly symmetrical face, he mused) and no obvious evidence of temporomandibular joint misalignment or swelling. There was, however, some significant redness in his right conjunctiva.

"It hurts when I chew and my girlfriend told me I had it," he answered.

Rolling forward on his stool, House took his penlight out of the inner pocket of his sport jacket and pulled down the patient's lower lid of first one eye then the other while shining the light at the normal tissue revealed on the left and the inflamed tissue of the right. Satisfied, he ordered "Open your mouth."

The patient did.

"Say AH."

The patient did. The teeth were all aligned well and there was no abnormal wearing pattern. The throat was slightly reddened and the patient's breath had the obvious sweet smell of a recently melted throat lozenge. The throat was only slightly sore but enough to cause the jaw joint pain. He needed only one more piece of information to confirm what he suspected.

"How long has it hurt to pee?" House asked as he rolled the stool back, satisfied with his diagnosis.

His patient remained with his mouth agape and stared at him in open amazement. House waited for a few seconds. Finally, the patient closed his mouth.

"See," House said, "the way this works is I ask a question and then you answer. Once we get that relationship going this exam will move along toward a welcomed end much more quickly."

"How did you know?" the young man inquired, the look of amazement vanishing to be replaced by something that annoyed House almost as much, awed fear.

With a tired nod, House searched the left outer pocket of his coat for the pill bottle. Finding it he pulled it out and popped the cap off with one hand. He tipped a vicodin tablet into his other palm and snapped the cap back on with practiced efficiency. Throwing the pill into his mouth and praying the effect of this latest dose of anti-pest medication worked quickly he motioned toward the man's hands still holding his pants. "The death grip you have on your pants is a giveaway."

The patient looked down at his guilty hands and forced himself to relax his grip, if only slightly. House deposited the pill bottle back into his pocket.

"How long?" House asked, an edge to his voice. "And remember," he added, getting the patient's attention again, "I still have a cane and will use it if necessary."

"A-about three days," the young man said, open fear now apparent in his face.

"You don't have TMJ," House said, as bored as stating the obvious always made him. He pulled his prescription pad out of the right outer pocket of his coat and began writing the first of two prescriptions for a week's course of doxycycline. Ripping the first script free he handed it to the patient. "Give this to your girlfriend."

The young man took the script bewildered and stared at it. "Why are you giving her a prescription?"

"Because, she probably doesn't have TMJ either," House informed as he completed the second identical script and handed it over as well. "However, she does have an infection. The same one you have."

"I have an infection?" the patient asked, stupidly.

House grabbed his cane and saw the patient flinch ever so slightly. "Yep," he said, barely able to hide his amusement. "You both have Chlamydia."

The fear on his patient's face was replaced by a mixture of surprise and shock. Here it comes, House thought, closing his eyes and waiting for the inevitable. "I have an STD?" the man asked as if on cue.

House sighed audibly this time. "I know it sounds completely crazy," House began sarcastically, "two young adults having unprotected sex and all. But yes, you have an STD."

"But you haven't even tested me or her," the patient protested.

"Don't worry," House offered, "I'll have the nice nurse come in and swab your crotch but that won't change the diagnosis. Chlamydia often causes nothing more than pus from the penis but in less common presentations the symptoms are conjunctivitis, the swelling and redness beneath your right eye," House pointed at the patient's face then his throat, "and a sore throat, especially if oral sex was involved. If you had had anal sex you might have had swelling and pain while taking a dump but since you're sitting comfortably I'm assuming there isn't any problem in that general department. True temporomandibular joint disease is uncommon so if your girlfriend's jaw is giving her enough pain to receive a misdiagnosis of TMJ she's probably had her case of Chlamydia for a while now."

House paused for only a brief moment, resigned to having to complete his explanation if any sort of compliance from this guy or his girlfriend were to be anticipated. "If your swab comes back positive, which it will, it's a good bet she gave it to you. The only way to make sure you don't get re-infected is to treat both of you or," House added with obvious skepticism, "suggest to her that abstinence is the best practice until marriage."

The look on his patient's face told him all he needed or wanted to know. "Yeah," House finished, "give her the prescription and tell her to talk to her previous boyfriend." House opened the door of the exam room to leave. "The tree of Chlamydia life is not about to be hewn down by your actions but we might be able to lop off a twig or two."

With that House left the exam room and headed for the nurse's station. He jotted down an order for the STD screening and the scripts he wrote. He didn't bother to add in his note his suspicion about the girlfriend's infection. If any medical professional reviewing the chart couldn't read the obvious signs between the lines they didn't deserve the information. He handed the chart to the nurse who promptly handed him his next case.

"Right" he muttered to himself. What a great weekend this was turning out to be.

He turned toward Exam Room 1. "Next!" he called and walked, leaning almost wearily on his cane, toward his next encounter with mediocrity.


	2. Chapter 2

Seeing is Believing (Part 2)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

The morning had progressed. Of course, that didn't mean it had improved at all, simply that time had gone by. By 11:45 am House had seen four cases of rhinovirus, the common cold, two additional cases of STDs – one gonorrhea the other herpes – and was preparing to see an ear infection in Exam Room 3. With limited resolve and even less enthusiasm, House took the chart from the nurse's hand and moved toward the exam room when he heard those footsteps again. Cuddy.

"House," Lisa called after him. Sheryl, the dayshift nursing supervisor, had kept a close eye on their clinic doctor and reported that House was behaving himself … for the most part. The complaints about his insults to parents were about par for a morning at the clinic, but the case load was steadily decreasing and he hadn't alienated the entire clinic staff, so all in all it was shaping up into a good day. Now if she could just get him to listen to reason.

For no reason, other than his deep suspicion that another ridiculous demand was about to be dropped in his lap, House found himself wishing to be _in_ the exam room with a patient rather than verbally spar with his boss again that morning – at least she could have waited until after he had had lunch. He stopped his forward progress and waited for her to stride up to him. With the ache in his leg it was the easiest course of action since sprinting away was obviously out of the question. As Cuddy approached, he noted the file folder she held half behind her lab coat. He immediately guessed what the folder held.

"No," he said perfunctorily.

"You don't even know what I want," Lisa said as she reached him.

"I'm not going to interview," House informed her.

Lisa took a breath deeper than she would have liked and let it out in preparation for the battle she now knew she would have to fight. House was nothing if not stubborn.

"You could at least look at some of the candidates befo…."

"Why don't you and Wilson interview?" He cut her off. "The Department of Diagnostic Medicine will throw those you choose a welcome bash. Just make sure one of them has Carmen Electra's eyes and we'll all be happy."

"There is no Department of Diagnostic Medicine without doctors," Lisa replied a bit more curtly than she had intended. She had wanted House to rehire Dr. Chase. If he had done that there was a good chance Dr. Cameron would return as well. Dr. Foreman was probably a lost cause but at least House would have two more doctors on his service. The extra clinic hours House was doing would keep him, for the most part, out of trouble but it wouldn't justify his department. For that House needed cases, and to take care of cases House needed staff. Good staff. And, Lisa knew, the qualifier there was the problem. It took a special kind of person to successfully work for House, but when those kinds of people are found there didn't seem to be an illness that could stand up to his team.

"So the degree from Hopkins on my office wall is a forgery," House challenged sarcastically. "You should probably let all the people in this clinic know that. They think they're being examined by a genuine doctor so I guess the jokes on them."

"It's been a week," Lisa tried again.

"Technically, six days," House corrected. "Chase's last fart vapor hasn't even had a chance to dissipate."

"What?" Cuddy's face showed just how easily his last remark had taken her off guard. House was certain that she would have been better acclimated to him by now.

"And you haven't even bothered to consider that I might need time to properly grieve," he continued.

"They're not dead," Lisa interjected quickly. "You drove them away."

"Now you're trying to tell me how I should feel about losing my entire team?" House replied, allowing his verbal volume to rise a bit and draw the attention of everyone at the nurse's station and in the clinic waiting room. "What kind of therapeutic process is that supposed to be? Is that how you assist those who mourn?"

Gritting her teeth to keep her own voice down Lisa practically hissed, "Mourn all you like, House. You have got to hire more staff or the Department of Diagnostic Medicine won't be renewed in the new fiscal budget."

For a moment, House paused to consider how serious Cuddy might be about that. He looked her directly in the eyes. He reasoned that if she were bluffing she would feel guilty enough to quail, if ever so slightly, at his continued gaze. She didn't flinch at all. Cuddy meant it. His department was in jeopardy. What surprised him more than anything was how little he cared about that fact.

"Don't forget what I said about Carmen's eyes," House said as he turned from his boss.

Lisa knew that House understood she was telling him the truth. The Board was quite clear in the directive to her. House was the kind of maverick that simply couldn't be left to his own devices. Teaching other doctors to be good diagnosticians was the only thing other than actually diagnosing illness for which House was valued at the hospital. His brilliance as a physician was never questioned. His ethics and methods continually were. His team had helped, along with James Wilson and her, to keep House in some kind of check. Lisa had thought that House would say something trite and then try to leverage the interview process for less clinic duty. She was prepared to cave … a little. She wasn't prepared for him to simply dismiss her altogether. Not even Gregory House would be willing to risk an entire medical department to get out of something as simple as interviews.

"Not Angelina Jolie's or Beyonce's eyes," House continued as he moved to the door of Exam Room 3 and opened it. "I'm partial," he finished as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

As Lisa Cuddy shook her head, sighed in exasperation and marched back to her office, House moved to the counter in the exam room and opened the patient's chart. Five year old male, deaf from birth, possible ear infection, no fever just pain in the left ear was what the nurse's note told him.

Turning, House faced his patient and one of his patient's parents, the mom. The boy was playing with an action figure of some super hero House didn't care to attempt to identify. The mother was watching the boy.

"When did the ear start hurting?" House inquired. Neither of the people in front of him seemed to notice he spoke. House expected this of the child, not the mom. He narrowed his eyes in concentration, watched and waited. When the mother didn't notice his attention to her for nearly a full minute House clapped his hands. There was no startled response, but the movement must have caught her eye because she looked his way, noticed he was waiting and straightened.

"I'm sorry," she said in a typical nasal delivery common of the deaf who learn to enunciate by tactile practice in oral deaf education. Very Marlee Matlin.

"When did the ear start hurting?" House repeated.

"He's been rubbing it since yesterday afternoon," the woman told him. As if on cue the boy pulled at his left ear pausing from his play to do so.

"Has there been any drainage?" House asked, looking at the mother to make sure she was looking at his face.

"No," she replied. "But he didn't sleep well last night."

Nodding, House turned to pull the otoscope off the wall. Deafness was often inherited but it didn't mean the kid couldn't have otitis media. A simple look see in the kid's ear would tell him what he needed to know. A script for an antibiotic and it would be lunch time and time to leave the wasteland of the clinic behind for the wasteland of the cafeteria. The difference was that in the cafeteria he was very likely to see Wilson, and doing so would make that particular wasteland bearable.

Tapping the child on the shoulder, House got his attention. The boy looked up into his face with what House could have sworn was an intelligent curiosity beyond his years. With a sudden gentleness the boy reached up and brushed House's stubbled beard with his fingertips, smiled and then shrugged. House supposed his might be the first beard the boy had ever seen. House brandished the otoscopic light and waved the light over his own hand to demonstrate the proverbial 'this won't hurt a bit' doctor routine before saying "I'm going to look in your ears." The child seemed to understand because he tilted his head to the side making performing the exam much easier. How many ear exams does it take to condition a small child to accept an otoscopic exam as the natural course of a clinic visit? House wondered. House examined the healthy ear first and noted an open ear canal with slight cerumen build-up but nothing structurally unusual. The hearing loss must be neurogenic, he reasoned. Next House moved to the left ear and noted again the easy acceptance as the boy tilted his head to the other side. What House found was a little confusing. The ear canal on this side was much smaller and shorter than on the other side. There was almost no cerumen and the structures were not inflamed as he anticipated that they would be.

House deposited the otoscope back in the wall bracket. Moving to the exam stool he sat down and deposited his cane on the edge of the instrument tray as was his custom. He looked critically into the boy's face.

The boy's mother stared at the doctor for a moment and said, "Does he have an infection?"

House didn't immediately answer. He was fascinated with the child's facial features. The face was normal except for a slight asymmetry of his mandible. Hadn't he just thought about facial symmetry? Was he seeing what he thought he was seeing? It was subtle. Maybe too subtle. If he was right, there might be more wrong here than just an earache.

"No," House said at last. "I don't think so." House tore his attention away from the boy and faced the mother. "I'd like to admit your son for some tests."

"Why?" the woman asked, now openly alarmed. "What's wrong with Bobby?"

House tilted his head in a fashion similar to what the child had done for the ear exams. "I'm not sure," he admitted, his curiosity piqued. "But I do know that it isn't an infection and ear pain in a child with deafness isn't normal. Don't you agree?"

The mother looked at her child and then back to the doctor. "It's just an earache," she protested. "Do you always admit children with earaches or just the deaf ones?"

The accusatory tone was what House had expected. The deaf community was close knit and structured. The fact that she would bring her child to a free clinic at all was a wonder and testified to the ongoing nature of the problem. The pain may have started last night but House was certain that this wasn't the first night of ear pain the boy had suffered recently. For whatever reason, the boy's usual pediatrician and otologist hadn't been able to find the problem. This was the mother's way of reaching out from the confines of the only community she had probable ever known.

"You knew there was something more wrong than an earache when you brought him here," House replied, not bothering to keep the smugness – a nuance she couldn't hear anyway – out of his voice. "Whatever is causing his pain is more than his regular doctors have been able to diagnose." House looked back to the boy. "Why don't you let me find out what the real cause of his problem is and we can just skip the 'you don't trust normal people part' from the beginning. It will go much better that way."

He glanced back into the mother's face to see her working through his not-so-subtle assessment of her dilemma. After a few moments her features relaxed as she got around to accepting his proposal and she nodded. "Okay," she said.

"Fine," House said standing. "I'll send the nurse in to get started with the admission process."

Grabbing his cane and his new patient's chart House turned to leave the room. It wasn't until he opened the exam room door that he would realize something else besides the pain in a deaf boy's ear was going to change his plans for lunch that day.


	3. Chapter 3

Seeing is Believing (Part 3)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

Saturday, July 7th, 12:01 pm

The shouting erupted just as House closed the door to Exam Room 3. He took one step and pulled up short. Standing at the counter in front of the clinic pharmacy were two young men with fake beards, thick polar coats, and two very lethal looking handguns. They were demanding that everyone stay where they were and that the pharmacist hand over all the narcotics and amphetamines he had in stock.

By the redness of their eyes, the sunken eye sockets, the nervous shuffling from foot to foot both of the robbers were doing, House knew they were both coming down from something, probably amphetamines, and coming down hard. He sympathized. He also knew how dangerous that made the situation. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Melinda, the nurse at the nurse's desk, slowly reach for the phone.

"Don't!" House said firmly, looking at Melinda and trying to keep the volume throttled back. In the waiting room, one of the patients waiting to be seen flipped open their cellular phone and quietly hit the phone's camera record button.

The robber who was keeping his back to the pharmacy counter to cover the clinic crowd swung his gun around toward House instantly. "What's going on?" he said quickly.

The nurse halted and House raised his hands to shoulder height brandishing the chart he held in one hand and his dangling cane in the other. "Stay calm," House told the man. "I just didn't want anyone to do anything stupid."

As if on schedule, Cuddy stormed out of her office demanding, "What is going on out here?"

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" House shouted. He was drowned out by the shouts from the man who was holding the gun on him just before swinging the muzzle of that gun toward Cuddy.

"Shut up and stay there!" he shouted at Lisa. "I'll kill you if you move."

"They're just about to leave," House told Cuddy, trying desperately to convey the need for her to do as she was told and silently stay put where she was.

Lisa looked directly into House's face and read the open fear there. If he was scared, the situation was as frightening as it looked.

Rocking forward and backward and wiping the sweat off his face on his coat sleeve, this robber gave a brief look behind him to his partner. "Hurry up, man!"

The other guy was shouting at the pharmacist to finish giving him the drugs.

To assert the authority that no one was disputing, the robber who was still pointing his gun at Cuddy shouted again, "I said no body move!"

Just a few seconds more, House thought. They'll have what they want and they'll run like jackrabbits from headlights on a dark night. That thought heralded the opening of the exam room door behind him. Of course, neither of the occupants inside could have any idea what was happening in the clinic at large, they couldn't hear the shouting.

There was only a single second, one heartbeat, to think about what to do. Time seemed to slow and House knew that this new turn of events was going to push a man already too edgy too far. The robber's eyes widened with fear as much as with anger and swung his gun back toward House. Spinning on his right foot and generating a shot of pure agony down his right leg, House shoved the woman and boy immerging from the exam room backward and pulled the door shut with a very loud slamming sound. His cane and the chart he was holding skidded across the floor as he fell forward into the now firmly closed door. He reached for his right thigh as he slid down the door to the floor onto his left shoulder.

I must have had too much momentum, House thought. No reason to fall into the closed door that way. He winced at the agony in his leg.

"Let's go!" and "Let's get out of here man!" was shouted simultaneously by the young men with the fake beards just after the gun went off. The robbers ran with drugs in hand. The security guard who had remained motionless the entire time, a tactic designed to keep the situation calm and keep himself alive to pull another shift, followed with his cell phone to his ear. As he moved to watch which way the two perpetrators ran he was heard to say, "Shots fired…."

Cuddy was ordering the nurses to keep everyone calm and pointing at the pharmacist ordered him to call 9-1-1. Then, she was at House's side trying to make sure he hadn't been shot in the leg he was holding in a death grip. The crowd from the clinic waiting room moved in behind her.

There was nothing like a cripple in agony to put on a really good show after a robbery, House thought dryly. A new wave of pain forced all other cynical rumination from his mind.

"House! Are you hurt?" Lisa was trying to see beyond his hands at the upper portion of his right leg.

House shook his head. It hurt too badly to say much. Funny, he thought, it's never hurt this bad just from twisting before. He must be holding his breath because his lungs began to feel like they were on fire. He forced himself to attempt a slow deep breath and relax. He wasn't successful.

"Let me have a look," Lisa said firmly, trying to move his hands away, straining to find out if there were any torn material or blood there. His grasp on the leg was too strong for her to move even a finger. She was about to order him to let go more firmly when the door behind House's back opened again and he fell backward into the exam room. A small boy and a woman stood at the opened door staring down at him. Lisa was startled by the look of horror on their faces until she realized they were both staring at House. Looking back down at him Lisa saw the red frothy sputum around his mouth and the small pool of blood that was slowly spreading out from behind House's right shoulder.

"Oh God," Cuddy whispered.

The color was being leeched from every object in his visual field. He was hypoxic because he had been holding his breath too long. House let go of his leg and found that the only way he could get any air into his lungs at all was to pant.

"He's been shot," someone behind Cuddy murmured. House wondered if that could be true. He hadn't felt anything but the pain in his leg. Had he been shot? It wouldn't be the first time and it wasn't like he couldn't remember what it felt like. There was the nagging feeling of slow suffocation, though. Dully, he began to think that maybe he had caught another bullet. Damn.

Lisa looked behind her toward the nurse's desk and shouted over the spectators, "Call a code!"

Turning back to House she found that he was looking at the little boy.

"House …. Greg, look at me," Lisa ordered.

House turned his gaze toward Cuddy. He tried to talk but his words would only come in staccato pieces between pants for breath. "If … I had … known … the cane …"

"Where's that cart?!" Lisa shouted, really scared now.

"… would be … su … such … a bullet … magnet …"

"House, shut up," Lisa said gently as she pulled at the buttons of his shirt to try and get a better look at his chest. Was he shot in the front or the back of the thorax?

"… I … I would have … let … you … take … my …"

"Be quiet, we're getting you to the ER. You're going to be just …" she didn't get a chance to finish before he did.

"… leg."

Lisa paused in shock as she met his eyes. She saw sincerity and acceptance there. She wasn't sure which frightened her the most.

"… fine," she finished slowly. As she did she watched as Greg House slipped into unconsciousness.


	4. Chapter 4

Seeing is Believing (Part 4)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

Saturday, July 7th, 12:27 pm

The code team ran down the corridor pushing the gurney that conveyed House toward the Emergency Room. As they rounded the last bend toward the trauma bays James Wilson caught up with Lisa Cuddy who was following the gurney.

"What the hell happened?" Jim asked as he caught the first glimpse of the pallor in House's face.

"The pharmacy in the clinic was robbed," Lisa explained as she ran. "Two men. They had guns."

Jim felt his heart jump a bit. Not again, he thought. "Not even House is stupid enough to taunt men with guns."

House's gurney came to a stop in Trauma Bay 4. The trauma surgeon, Dr. Faxton, and the trauma team immediately surrounded him. The over-bright lights of the exam array mounted on the ceiling above the gurney burst on giving the team an opportunity to scrutinize the injuries of their patient.

"A single gunshot wound to the thorax," Lisa spoke into the bay at no one in particular. "He's lost a lot of blood." As she finished she turned to see the worried look on Wilson's face. She lowered her voice and addressed Wilson directly.

"He didn't taunt them," she informed House's best friend, "he saved the lives of a little boy and his mother."

Jim continued to stare at House. Something about seeing a friend shot for the second time in a year was so fundamentally wrong that he was having trouble wrapping his brain around it. What was House thinking? What did he do to save those lives? House saved lives regularly with the only interpersonal tool he ever really exercised, medicine. This was unexpected. Not completely beyond the pale, but self-sacrifice wasn't the kind of adjective anyone who knew Greg House was likely to use in the same sentence with his name. House purposely kept a distance from patients and just about everyone else. He felt that caring clouded his judgment, flawed the science. House didn't move in a world of emotion like everyone else. He simply wasn't capable of doing so. So that brought Jim back to his questions about what had happened. What? When? Why? and….

"How?" Wilson asked aloud, nervously running a hand through his hair.

"He pushed them behind an exam room door," Lisa recounted, "just as one of the robbers fired at them."

All the alarms on the bedside monitor began to sound and the volume of discourse between the trauma team members rose as Greg House went into shock, his body losing the battle against hypovolemia from hemorrhage and ongoing hypoxia. Drs. Wilson and Cuddy watched as the team worked at a feverish pace to get ahead and throw a roadblock in the way of House's downward slide toward death. House had made this journey before, twice, and come out the other side only slightly worse for wear. But how many times does a man get to do so? Wilson suspected that House would suggest the odds were significantly lower with each trip. And, Jim feared, when it came to science, especially medical science, House was right far more often than he was wrong.

* * *

Two and a half hours after the robbery, Greg House was still in surgery. Lisa Cuddy would have loved nothing more than to spend her time waiting in the quiet of her office for word about how things were going. However, for that to happen there would have had to be actual quiet in her office. The media frenzy that accompanied the news that the Princeton-Plainsboro Free Clinic pharmacy had been robbed and that a hospital employee had been shot was keeping her very busy. Not only were reporters from print, radio, and television swamping her with requests for more details, she was fielding calls from stakeholders in the hospital's interests. Important stakeholders like board members and tenured medical staff members were wondering if she was doing everything she could to ensure the continued safety of the hospital's patients and of the thousands of staff members who were and weren't at work that day and who didn't get shot. Sure, she thought sardonically, House gets shot and I'm left holding the bag. It isn't like any of these people haven't requested that she kill him or even threatened to shoot him themselves. 

The moment she thought it she regretted it. House annoyed everyone. Lisa knew that he would before she hired him. How much he would prove to annoy her she hadn't even come close to gauging correctly. Still, House had been everything she could have wanted in his department. He solved the unsolvable case, saved lives that would have otherwise been lost, and provided a significant boost to the reputation of the hospital by performing those feats of magic so regularly that many uninformed simply took his skill for granted. Those who knew better, namely those who had tried to do what House does and failed miserably at it, understood that finding a physician like House was a once in a lifetime, perhaps once in a generation, occurrence and then only if you were very lucky.

But the fact that House was rare and (Need she confess it?) special didn't completely explain her anxiety. The pressure of answering the hard questions was something she could handle. You didn't become the managing executive of a hospital as prestigious as Princeton-Plainsboro if you couldn't take the heat. No, what bothered Lisa Cuddy was more fundamental than the concerns about safety and hospital reputation. Greg House was an ass as big as all outdoors. Yet, there was something almost irrepressible about his inability to control himself, to be anything other than what he was. So what was he?

A friend. House was her friend … and he was fighting for his life.

* * *

Robert Damron settled into his hospital room on Pediatrics. Dorothy, his mother, made herself comfortable in the chair beside his bed after making sure the entire nursing staff understood that Bobby was deaf but could read lips if they first got his attention. He hadn't learned to speak as she had but he could sign and she could translate. 

It took a lot of convincing by Dr. Wilson for her to allow her son to stay at all. His doctor had been shot protecting them. She didn't really know how to respond to that. She was grateful on the one hand but on the other she worried that Dr. Wilson, though he was very kind, didn't know what Dr. House had been concerned about when he had examined Bobby. Dr. Wilson had promised that he would have another doctor consult on Bobby's case in the morning.

Dorothy sent a text message to her mother and explained that they were staying at the hospital as planned and continued to answer the questions sent back as text messages for the next half hour. Yes, they were both safe. Yes, the hospital promised that there was nothing to worry about. No, she didn't know how Dr. House was doing. Yes, another doctor was going to see Bobby. No, she didn't know how long they were going to be in the hospital. Yes, Bobby was getting medicine for the pain in his ear. No, none of the nurses knew sign. No, she didn't need to come to the hospital.

After all the questions were answered, Dorothy got into bed next to her son and together they began to read a book. As Bobby's fingers followed along with the text, Dorothy signed the words taking special care to repeat the new one's Bobby had trouble with.

She hoped three things as they worked through the book. First, that tomorrow would bring some answers as to why Dr. House was concerned enough about her son to admit him to the hospital. Second, that the new doctor, whoever he was, would be a doctor who didn't assume nothing was wrong with Bobby's ear just because he was deaf. Third, that Dr. House would be all right. The last hope was a prayer really. How often does a complete stranger save your life? It was Dorothy's suspicion that such a thing was rare indeed.

* * *

Johnny Daly was trying to make it through the fourth level of Cursed Valley when he saw the pop-up from Billy Mayhew. 

'CIO' the IM pop-up said. The next pop-up contained a link. Johnny clicked on it and was taken to a recent addition to VideoTube. He waited for the video stream to load enough for the minivid to play. He watched the whole thing – twice – before sending the link on to the fifteen other guys on his swim team with the message 'Check out the Kodak courage'.

After sending the links he watched several more times. Because the IM's came flying back almost as soon as his fourth viewing ended, Johnny never got back to his game.

* * *

House's right lung had completely collapsed and significant amounts of blood and air had entered the pleural cavity causing a tension pneumothorax and severe shock. Immediate surgery was required to save his life. 

The bullet had struck Greg in the posterior right scapula fragmenting the bullet and the bone sending shards of both into the lung and vascular tissue beneath. After repairing the scapula and removing the bullet fragments big enough to see radiographically, the surgical team placed a chest tube on the right side and closed the wound. The patient was sent to intensive care on a ventilator and with orders to keep him sedated for the night. The lung would re-inflate fully after all the free air and fluid was drained from the pleural cavity by the chest tube. The surgeons would wait until morning and see how things looked then before waking him.

Wilson sat at the bedside and thumbed the edge of his cell phone, contemplating the wisdom of flipping it open and placing the call. House's parents, though not close to their only child, should be notified. True, their son was forty-seven and tended to not tell them the most significant things that happened to him but Jim remembered only too well the backlash that House endured when his parents found out he had been shot just eleven months ago and no one had called to tell them. House didn't say much but Jim suspected that he regretted the pain and disappointment his mother had felt at being excluded from his life when she thought she should be needed most. Of course, that was how mothers were supposed to feel. House never mentioned the reaction from his father. But that was par for the course with House.

House wouldn't have called them at all if Jim hadn't threatened to do it. For that nudge Jim had to endure days of snide comments and more than the usual level of sarcasm from his friend. But, as these things usually did, the resentment waned as other irritants in House's life rose to take the brunt of his ire. Jim knew he risked another onslaught of the same treatment but wasn't going to add the insult of a mother's hurt feelings to the injury of a pissed-off House.

He flipped open his phone, searched the contacts list, selected the number, and pressed the send button.


	5. Chapter 5

Seeing is Believing (Part 5)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

Saturday, July 7th, 9:18 pm

"You are never going to believe this," Robert Chase's Aussie accent was tinged with considerable incredulity. He was speaking while looking at the screen of his computer. Behind him, lounging on the sofa and reading the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, Allison Cameron looked up from her article about Complement Factor 3 and age-related macular degeneration.

"What is it?"

"No," Robert said, "you really have to see it." He turned in his chair to look at her. "It's … it's … unbelievable."

Rising, Allison dropped her journal and moved to Robert's side. Together they watched the VideoTube minivid and then looked at each other again.

"Oh my God!" Allison held her hand over her mouth in fascinated horror. Without much talking, they both headed for the bedroom to change and then hastened out to the car. They had to get to Princeton-Plainsboro as quickly as possible.

* * *

The evening news played on the TV. Eric Foreman listened rather than watched. He was trying to finish chopping the celery for his salad while running through the events of his day again. The argument he had had with Lisa Cuddy that morning, the third – no fourth! – such argument in as many weeks about returning to PPTH, seemed to be on continual rewind. The offer was good, he didn't deny it. What he worried about was the way the place made him behave. There was too much of _him_ in every nook and cranny. _He_ seemed to permeate the very air with … with what? 

Eric thought about that. What did House do to that place? To the people there? No one man should have that much affect. It didn't make sense. The last time Eric could remember anyone having this much sway was in his old neighborhood. A gang-banger-dealer named Justice (and the irony of that name deserved the legend it inspired when mentioned) had created a kind of prison on his block complete with fear and intimidation of every living thing. A bullet had ended the terror but not until entire families had opted to move rather than suffer the daily demands for respect (the liquid asset variety) and the threat of in-your-face violence by the crowd that surrounded Justice.

Cuddy wanted Eric to take a department chair and build a team that was supposed to do what House did. She felt that Eric's department would be a kinder, gentler place for diagnostic medicine. He knew better. Nobody was as good as House in House's mind. And since that's what House thought he would work to make anyone attempting to do what he did as miserable as possible. Eric's experience told him that nothing could change the way House impacted the people around him. If two bullets and narrowly escaping from a jail sentence hadn't done it, why did anyone think Eric could?

"Shots rang out inside the free clinic at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital early today," the newscaster announced. "Two armed gunmen robbed the clinic pharmacy of some narcotics and were last seen running away from the clinic building at just after twelve noon." The hospital's name captured his attention and Eric paced the length of his kitchen to get a better look at the TV set in his living room. Eric saw a familiar face standing in front of the clinic doors with no less than a half-dozen microphones extended in front of her. The graphic below the face told viewers that she was Lisa Cuddy, MD, Medical Director of PPTH.

"The hospital has been completely secured and all of our patients, their families, and hospital staff members are safe," Cuddy was saying. "We are taking every precaution to insure that the incident that occurred in the clinic today can never be repeated."

The image cut to the same doors from earlier that day, only from a more distant angle. In front of the doors were several police squad cars with lights flashing.

Lisa Cuddy's voice could be heard over the image of the police moving in through the clinic doors. "The employee that was injured today is in the care of our excellent medical staff and everyone here at Princeton-Plainsboro is praying for their swift recovery."

The image flashed back to the face of the Medical Director as she was turning away. The Channel 3 reporter shouted after her. "Dr. Cuddy! Is it true one of your doctors was shot by the men who robbed the clinic pharmacy?"

Eric stepped even closer to the television still holding the forgotten paring knife in his hand. He knew every doctor who worked in the clinic. Most of them were friends. Okay, all of them – with the exception of House – were his friends. He watched as Cuddy hesitated. As Eric looked at her face, the gravity in her countenance, he knew the answer was yes.

The reporter, not wanting to let the Medical Director go without scooping the truth, pushed, "We have had reports that you witnessed the shooting, Dr. Cuddy. Is that true?"

Finally turning back toward the reporters and microphones Lisa Cuddy's face seemed to have aged perceptibly. "Yes," she answered simply.

"Was it a doctor?" the reported pressed.

"That's all. Thank you." With that, the Medical Director could be seen pushing back through the clinic doors as the reporters were barred by hospital security and police personnel from following her.

Eric set the knife on a table and pulled his cellular phone out of its belt clip to flip it open. He hit five on his speed dial and waited as the familiar tones of the corresponding ring began at the other end.

* * *

Robert drove while Allison fidgeted uneasily in the passenger seat of her Forenza. 

"He'll be okay," he tried to reassure her.

"We don't know that," was her too hasty reply.

Robert felt the ache in his hands and realized he was gripping the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles pale. He was about to say something more when Allison's cell phone began to ring.

Pulling her cell out of her pocket, she looked at the number and recognized it immediately. "It's Foreman." She sounded surprised.

"He must have heard," Robert reasoned.

Allison answered the call, "Cameron."

"Did you and Chase see the news tonight?" Foreman's voice asked.

Allison both shook her head and said, "No." Her brows furrowed.

"There was a shooting at the clinic today."

"We know."

"You were there?" Foreman asked with alarm.

"No," she said. "Did they say what happened?"

"Yeah. Two gunmen robbed the clinic pharmacy and I think one of the clinic doctors was shot. They didn't say how or which…"

"Foreman," Allison tried to interrupt him.

"… doctor but I'm worried. I know it wasn't Cuddy 'cause she did the press conference this afternoon."

"Foreman!" she repeated more firmly.

"What?" Foreman paused. Allison's voice had sounded awfully scared. He had a sinking feeling and a dull realization that he wasn't going to like what he heard if he asked, "You don't know who it was do you? Who got shot?"

"We do," Allison said, swallowing before continuing. "It was House."

There was a pause as Allison waited for Foreman to digest the news.

"House!? How do you know?" Foreman wondered out loud. "If you didn't see the news tonight …. Did you talk to Cuddy? Wilson?"

Again Allison shook her head as if Foreman could see her. "We saw it on the internet."

"Where?"

"It was on the internet. VideoTube."

"You saw House get shot … on the internet …." Foreman didn't get that at all.

Robert tensed as he listened to only half of the conversation. He could almost reconstruct Foreman's half by the expressions he saw cross Allison's face.

"I think it was a cell phone video," Robert offered, guessing that Foreman was having a hard time believing that they had seen what they claimed they had seen.

"Did you hear that?" Allison asked.

"Yeah, I heard Chase," Foreman said. There was a slight pause and then, "Where are you two?"

"We're on our way to the hospital. I've tried to call Wilson and Cuddy but all I seem to get is voicemail."

Foreman's voice seemed quieter, contemplative, "I don't think he's doing very well," he said.

Robert saw Allison's face drain of some color. "Why do you think that?" she asked.

"It was written all over Cuddy's face at the press conference," Foreman's voice answered. "The last time I saw her look like that was the last time House had a bullet in him."

* * *

"Dr. Wilson?" 

Jim turned to the nurse that approached him as she entered House's intensive care room.

"Yes?"

"Phone for you," she said. "At the desk," she pointed behind her and then moved to check the amount of fluid remaining in the patient's large volume IV.

Pushing himself up out of the chair he stretched his back gently. "Thank you," he said, "I'll be right there."

He turned before leaving the room to glance at the face of his friend. The ET tube was taped securely as it emerged from the right side of his mouth. The soft intermittent sigh of the ventilator accompanied the steady soft beep produced by the cardiac monitor that kept perfect cadence with his heart rate. House was sedated and his face, usually so expressive, seemed too serene. Too … empty. There was no obvious thought process going on behind the closed lids, no sense that any part of House's brain was working in the usual state of overdrive. That was as it should be. The drugs were hypnotics, designed to keep the mind from remembering the trauma, pain, or unpleasantness of the current situation.

Turning from House's bedside and heading for the nurse's station Wilson wondered if, despite the medication, his friend was ruminating about what had happened today. More than just about anyone Jim knew, House had reason to question creation about the events of his life. He had suffered the improbable with the infarction in his leg, losing the mobility that allowed for an athletic expression of frustration when needed. House had always been the kind of man who thought too much. His natural athletic abilities, like his musical talent, had been a kind of balance, keeping him from becoming too cerebral, from relying on the rational too deeply. It kept him in contact with the reality of simple, everyday joy. Losing that had harmed him. He had lost Stacy, his mobility, his self-image, his … balance. He had lost a lot. And he had cost himself a great deal more as a result.

Now, twice in one year, he had been shot: once because he had angered a patient or a family member and once trying to save a patient and his mother. Maybe, in some twisted way, the universe was trying to put things back in balance. As Jim neared the desk and reached for the receiver held out to him by the unit secretary he wondered what House would think of such a notion.

He raised the receiver to his ear, "This is Dr. Wilson."


	6. Chapter 6

Seeing is Believing (Part 6)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

Bobby tugged at his ear almost non-stop until the latest dose of anesthetic ear drops took effect. With some encouragement from a very small dose of diphenhydramine and gentle rocking by his mother the boy finally fell asleep.

Jim continued to stand outside the room and watch the child and his mother. Why did House want to admit this kid? What was going on with him that would interest the diagnostician? House never, simply never, took a case that didn't contain a significant puzzle. Problem was, most of the puzzles that interested House were of the genius-only variety.

Lisa Cuddy approached the room and stopped as she reached Jim's side. She seemed to read his mind. "Any idea why House admitted him?"

Shaking his head, Jim continued his line of thought out loud. "And it's not likely that we'll figure that out, either."

The two looked at each other. At first, Cuddy's eyes held a mild rebuke to Jim's assessment. After a second or two her face caught up with her own thoughts as she acquiesced to the truth of his assertion. "When will they wake him?"

Jim knew she wasn't talking about the boy but House. "In the morning." He looked back through the glass at House's patient. "If," he continued, "there aren't any complications."

Lisa swallowed. "There won't be," she offered, her voice only marginally tinged with conviction.

"For everyone's sake," Wilson replied, nodding toward the boy, "I hope you're right."

* * *

Allison and Robert stood shoulder to shoulder and looked into the ICU room. Neither wanted to talk as each dealt with their own thoughts. This was not how they would have imagined their next meeting with House. 

For Robert the sight of House so ill was almost painful. For some reason he found it hard not to imagine his father's face behind the ventilator tubing. There had only been two men in his life he ever wanted real approval from. One of them had died thousands of miles away and with far too much left unsaid, unspoken, unfinished. The other lay not ten feet away. Robert had every right to be bitter. What he felt … he didn't know what he felt. Only one thing was certain: he was not ready to be done with Greg House. Not by a long shot.

Gregory House looked – in the middle of the chaos that was an intensive care bed with all the tubes and the wires and beeps and monitor displays – almost small. Allison wondered if the image would anger him. Though not a large man, House filled spaces with his presence. He took over rooms, hallways, entire buildings it seemed. He was bigger than life in a lot of ways. He was also the single most aggravating person Allison had ever met. He was equal parts passion, folly, intelligence, and stupidity. He was unapologetically unique.

House had a way of forcing everyone who knew him to take a side – to either love or hate him. It was as if he simply couldn't live with the idea that anyone in his life would remain ambivalent about who or what he was. No, that wasn't right, Allison thought. House really didn't care what anyone thought. Allison cared what others thought of House for House. She had always cared and he, apparently, never did or would. He didn't care what others thought and those others include Allison. That was what had hurt most of all.

Allison's eyes moved from House's face to the monitors that were arrayed around his bed and back again. She noted the heart rate, the tidal volume of each ventilated breath, the blood pressure, the level of suction of his chest tube, the oxygen saturation. She narrowed her eyes. The numbers, all apparently normal, didn't seem to add up. Somewhere in the back of her head silent alarm bells began to ring.

"That's not right," her whisper drawing Robert's attention.

"What?" he looked at her not sure he'd heard her correctly. "What's not right?"

Allison slowly shook her head. "Something…" she replied still unsure.

* * *

The black around him brightened first to a grey and then to a blinding white. He listened to the soft sound of her voice. 'I can't be with you. What's so great about you is that you always think you're right. What's so frustrating about you is that you are right so much of the time. You are brilliant, funny, surprising, sexy. But with you I was lonely.' Stacy's voice ran through his head – over and over, each time the physical response he felt was the same. Each time it was as if the air was sucked from the room and his heart was left to try and soldier on in the vacuum created by those words … those oh so true utterances that changed everything. Nothing that happened after would ever take those words back. Sure, she ran back towards him but he knew that this truth would always make that run a lie. Everybody lies. Even the one you love. The pain of that knowledge just kept squeezing and now was so tight his chest felt as if it had to explode to keep him from being crushed under the weight of it. He couldn't breathe … perhaps didn't want to anymore. The light called and in the light there was no more need for breath….

* * *

The alarms began to ring. They always reminded Allison of claxons. The peak inspiratory pressure alarm on the ventilator was competing with the oxygen saturation alarm. House wasn't getting enough oxygen because the pressure in his ventilator circuit was too high. Something was preventing the ventilator from getting air into his lungs. 

Both Robert and Allison sprinted through the door and to the bedside. Grabbing an Ambu, Robert disconnected the ventilator and began to bag House. "There's too much resistance," he informed Allison and the nurse who had followed them into the room.

"Get Dr. Faxton in here," Robert gave the order to the nurse as he worked harder and harder to bag. To Allison he warned, "If we don't get his tube cleared he'll code."

Allison instinctively grabbed suction tubing and prepared to try to clear the ET tube and restore a patent airway. As soon as she connected the catheter to suction and donned sterile gloves she nodded to Robert. "Ready."

Disconnecting the Ambu from the ET, Robert held the end so Allison could suction. The catheter passed easily and as she applied the suction there was a scant amount of bloody sputum that immediately came up through the suction catheter. She pulled out and Robert began to bag again.

"No help," he told her. "It's still too difficult."

"There's nothing there," she said.

"Go deeper."

Allison nodded. They repeated the suctioning and this time she went deep enough to elicit a weak cough reflex. The result was the same.

"Damn it," Robert exclaimed as he attempted to keep ventilating stiffening lungs.

Grabbing a stethoscope off the table at the bedside, Allison listened for lung sounds. She shook her head in frustration, "It's tight in there." She bent down to look at the chest tube collection apparatus. There was no indication of a leak only normal tidaling in the waterseal chamber. "The chest tube's working."

The nurse reentered the room. "Dr. Faxton's on his way," she informed them.

"Get some vecuronium," Robert told the nurse. He tried to quickly estimate how much House weighed. "Eight milligrams," he continued as he watched the nurse retrieve the medication from the resuscitation cart.

He looked at Allison and saw the same concern on her face. "ARDS?" he offered.

Allison nodded agreement. Adult respiratory distress syndrome. They'd need an x-ray to confirm but the odds were good they were right.

As soon as the nurse administered the vecuronium Robert began to feel the effects on the smooth muscles of House's lungs. Bagging became easier and House's oxygen saturation began to rise.

* * *

The light receded. Grey deepened to black and he found himself floating, thinking and floating. There were voices other than Stacy's. They were near but he couldn't tell what they were saying. Something about them was familiar. He knew those voices. He didn't care. The crushing feeling remained and the pain focused his attention elsewhere. Why had the light gone? He wanted to walk into that light. It promised the end of his pain. There was a seduction to that end that both terrified and fascinated him. Would it be so bad to be done? Hadn't he done enough? Enough good, enough harm? Ah, that was the pain. The harm. Harm to everyone. 

'I associate with you through choice. And any relationship that involves choice you have to see how far you can push before it breaks. Despite all your smartass remarks I knew you gave a damn. This time…. You were either going to help me through this or you weren't. I got my answer. And one day our friendship will break.' The breaking was in the light. The pain was in the blackness. Which one did he fear more? Right now, in this unplace, he couldn't decide. Maybe, he didn't want to have to decide. Not now … but soon.


	7. Chapter 7

Seeing is Believing (Part 7)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

The Department of Diagnostic Medicine was quiet. Too quiet. The television in House's office was off. The stereo was off. There was no bouncing ball or clicking keys on a computer keyboard. The conference room coffee pot sat clean and dry in the coffeemaker. The bread in the fridge was stale. So was the open box of animal crackers.

Eric stood with arms folded staring at the empty whiteboard. It sat, as the rest of department, unused. He had never used a tool like a whiteboard for differential diagnoses until he came to work for House. This was the way House did things. Write down everything you know. Place it out in the open. Let the light of day shine on it. Work it over in your mind. Talk it out. Brainstorm.

Problem is, Eric thought, not everyone's mind worked like House's did. Thank God for that!

The minute he had the thought he regretted it. In all honesty, what House's mind did with small details was amazing. How many times had the littlest thing, something everyone else would discount, trigger that mind to make a leap to the correct diagnosis and … in doing so … save a life that would otherwise have become a sad statistic?

Yeah, he countered, but how many times did that leap cause harm, both physical and psychological harm, even death? It happened too many times for Eric's comfort zone. But Eric's conscience wasn't the measuring stick employed in this room. Fact is, nobody's opinion really mattered here but House's.

The benefit of being a department head, he supposed. Or, the benefit of having no conscience to speak of.

That was unfair and Eric knew it. House had a conscience, just not the kind that one normally encounters in other members of the human race. Cases affected House. On rare occasions people did as well. House advocated for his patients with a ferocity that sometimes frightened Eric. House was also equally brutal with patients' feelings, discounting their emotional needs if it meant achieving his ends. It was just damn lucky that House's ends usually meant someone destined to die would cheat death for a while longer. What would happen if House turned those gifts, those powers to things other than medicine? Say … crime?

Before he could contemplate that thought any further his beeper went off. Eric pulled it from his belt and read the message there. Moving to the phone on the corner of the desk, he dialed his service. "Dr. Foreman."

He listened to the information about Mrs. DiMarco. She had had a stroke earlier in the day. The hemorrhage in her brain was so severe that she was comatose without any reflexive responses. The prognosis was very poor and he had been expecting this since five that afternoon. He looked at his watched. It was 00:14 am. His patient had died ten minutes ago. "Has anyone spoken with her husband?" The Internal Medicine resident, Dr. Singh, had spoken with Mr. DiMarco. There was nothing left to do but dictate the final consultation note on her chart. Not even House could have saved her. "Thank you."

He hung up and thought about this last notion. Would he always compare every case to what House would have done? Was that how it was going to be? Eric wasn't sure he liked that. He also wasn't sure there was anything he could do about it.

He turned and surveyed the room again. So much of what he liked about medicine he had discovered in this room. He had also discovered a great deal about the practice of medicine that he hated. The latter was mostly because of House. Yet, some of it he had found inside himself and that was not House's fault.

Sighing heavily, Eric moved to leave and go back to the ICU where House lay fighting against the onset of complications from a bullet he received trying to save a mother and her little boy. Eric had always believed that House simply didn't care about people. Now, he was challenged to see something else in House other than the nature of an asshole, the characterization with which Eric often painted him. House had done something that was selfless, heroic. Nothing could change those actions. He headed back to the elevator.

What Eric wanted to know was why he had done it? What was in it for House? Cuddy had insisted that there wasn't time for House to do anything else. That suggestion implied that his old boss's instinct was to save them without regard for his own safety. And that piece of reasoning flew in the face of everything Eric had thought he knew about Gregory House.

* * *

"Will you help?" Lisa Cuddy asked the three of them. "All of you still have privileges." 

"Sure" and "Absolutely" were the responses from Robert Chase and Allison Cameron. Eric Foreman didn't answer immediately. He looked over his shoulder at the still form of House in the ICU bed. What had House seen in the boy that interested him? Was that why he had tried to save them? To preserve the puzzle? If that was the case, how was he going to solve the puzzle if he was in ICU or, worse, dead?

"Foreman?" Lisa pressed. She didn't really know what else to do. James was currently overseeing the care of Bobby Damron but he was an oncologist. What the boy needed was someone who knew how House reasoned. The most appropriate 'someones' stood directly in front of her.

Eric looked back at the Medical Director and slowly nodded. He had decided. "Yeah," he told her, "I'll do it. My last case just wrapped up so I'm free right now."

Lisa took in a relaxing breath in and let it out as she nodded her appreciation. "Good," she told them. "I'll tell his mother in the morning that you've all taken his case and I know Dr. Wilson will be grateful." She looked up the hall to where James Wilson was talking quietly with House's trauma surgeon. The fact that Chase, Cameron, and Foreman were going to take House's patient meant James wouldn't have to deal with two difficult situations on top of his own patient load.

* * *

Jim finished talking with Dr. Faxton about the new complication House had suffered. House's parents were due to arrive in less than eight hours and he wanted to be able to explain the situation to them. 

ARDS was not an unusual complication with pulmonic trauma. The trouble was the nature of the syndrome. Diffuse alveolar damage could cause significant hypoxia. Prolonged periods of low blood oxygen levels could damage House's other internal organs. Jim's biggest concern was House's liver, already stressed from the protracted use of large quantities of vicodin. His second major concern was House's brain. How would a man like House handle life with any kind of hypoxic brain damage? If Jim knew his friend at all he was certain House would insist death was preferable. And, Jim thought darkly, he might just die from the ARDS. That wasn't even counting the potential for infection from the gunshot wound or other possible complications. The mortality rate from ARDS was nearly 60 percent.

The optimist in Jim hated the numbers. The scientist in House loved them. This was one of those times when Jim wished he could argue with House about it over a beer. That would mean that his friend had not been shot again. It would mean that he wouldn't have to face that friend's mother in a few hours and try to explain to her what the numbers might mean.

He sighed. Six years ago House had promised to pay Jim ten dollars for every patient that thanked him when he told them they were dying. Somehow Jim didn't think he was going to get a thank you from House's parents when he explained the situation to them. And, even if they did, the numbers told him the odds of collecting his next ten dollars from House were slim.

* * *

The grey-blackness that engulfed him was relentless. The voices were quiet now. Now there were only his own thoughts to contend with. He had never really liked being alone with his thoughts. There were too many of them and they betrayed him far too often. He couldn't lie to them, out-reason them, or trick them. His thoughts battered at him, accused him of his own pathetic nature. They reminded him of what he was and what he wasn't. What was it Wilson had said? 'You don't like yourself but you do admire yourself. It's all you've got so you cling to it. You're so afraid if you change you'll lose what makes you special.' 

Hadn't he worried about losing what made him special? And what, exactly, was that? The last time he spent time in this unplace he challenged the Un-Cuddy with it. 'What do I have? I have my brain. That's it."

No Wilson, he spoke into the endless nothing surrounding him, you've got it wrong. I cling to reason. It is the one gift given me. It is the thing that allows me to face the world and gives that world meaning. Without it I am nothing. Without it I am not special. Without it I am better off in the light.


	8. Chapter 8

I'd like to again thank my betareaders, Allie and Gail. Thank the Lord for those smarter than I...

Seeing is Believing (Part 8)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

Outside the window of House's hospital room the dawn began to lighten the sky. Inside the room there was little change until the nurses, Cheryl and Beth, entered and began the task of turning the patient. The goal was to recruit alveoli, to improve oxygenation. To do so, the patient had to be turned onto his side with the 'good' lung up. Turning a patient onto a side that had a chest tube inserted was painful. There was no help for it. Pain or death by slow suffocation were the only options. Beth pulled a syringe with four milligrams of morphine from her uniform pocket and administered the analgesic. Cheryl quietly spoke to her patient telling him what they were doing and what they were about to do. Better to pre-warn and pre-medicate for the pain.

Cheryl checked the patient's response to a train-of-four. She checked the electrodes attached to the inside of his right wrist, made sure the wires from the pulse generator were secure, checked the voltage of the generator, and pushed the TOF button. The patient's thumb twitched twice briskly and once weakly. The response was appropriate for the amount of paralytic he was receiving. Beth tipped the urometer, noting the patient's urine output for the past hour. She then checked the suction level of the chest tube, noted the drainage level, and marked the collection chamber. Turning her attention to the monitor, Beth wrote down the most recent vital signs and checked the patient's heart rhythm to make sure there had been no changes. All the IV medications were running at their prescribed rates and the volumes where checked and noted. Together and using the half draw sheet under the patient's torso, the nurses gently pulled the patient from supine to a right-side lying position. In response the bedside monitor began to alarm. The patient's heart rate had become tachycardic. Cheryl tucked three pillows down the length of the patient's back and hips, taking care to keep the spine angle neutral, and placed an additional pillow between the patient's knees. Beth straightened the top sheet to cover the patient's lower body and made sure his right arm was free from under his torso. She arranged the chest tube and foley catheter tubing to prevent kinking and allow for adequate drainage. The ventilator tubing was adjusted to prevent tension on the ET tube. The pillow under his head was flipped to place the cool side against his skin and Cheryl made sure his right ear was not bent under the weight of his head. Finally, Beth silenced the alarm and both nurses stood at the bedside and watched the monitors to await the slow return to normal. The heart rate did begin to fall back toward baseline as the narcotic took affect and the patient became used to the new body position.

Cheryl made certain the patient's hands were laid flat against the sheets to prevent cramping of the fingers, gently patting each. She murmured reassurances and both nurses left the room.

* * *

Lisa Cuddy watched the turning procedure through the glass of the ICU room. She had gone home to try to sleep not five hours ago. After spending four restless hours she showered and came back to the hospital. Her first stop was this corridor to look in at the patient in this room. She had seen Greg vulnerable before. This was different. Both times before, first with the muscle infarction and the last time he was shot, Greg had managed to direct his care before succumbing. This time he had slipped into unconsciousness before he could give anyone an idea of what he expected from his care. He was young, just 48 years old. Somehow, she felt he seemed much older. His body had taken abuse at unusual levels for someone his age. What could they really expect from him? ARDS was serious - deathly serious. The expectation was that someone with his strength and youth should be able to rally, to overcome the odds. But, what kind of reserve did Greg really have?

Her mind returned to his last words to her, 'If I had known … I would have let you take my leg'. She swallowed against the tears unsuccessfully. Turning, she headed back to her office for a cup of coffee and some quiet, if not peace, before the rest of the world awakened and she was forced, for another day, to be the professional face of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

* * *

The five o'clock morning news on all the local stations carried the story of the brave doctor who saved a mother and her child as their lead story. To augment the impact the same poor quality cellular phone video, pulled from the popular internet site, was played over and over to the citizens of Princeton, New Jersey. By six that same morning, every major media market in the country was using the same video. The patient who had taken the video had become a celebrity in their own right and Princeton-Plainsboro was the center of national attention.

James watched the morning news on the television in House's office for a few more moments. He waited until he had heard the weather and travel reports, making certain there would be no delays in air traffic before flipping the TV off. Notoriety wasn't what someone like House wanted. He garnered it for his intellectual integrity and his medical abilities, certainly, but that was only in circles that he navigated with comfort. House simply hated the idea of scrutiny. James understood his reticence. Although his friend really didn't care what others thought, he did care how much others knew about him. He was uncomfortable with disclosure. James looked around his friend's office. He imagined it filled with cards, gifts, well-wishes and could clearly picture House's frowning face.

House's backpack lay on his desk. An orderly had brought it up to House's ICU room late last night from the clinic. James brought it back here. His curiosity got the better of him and James opened it to see what House had packed within. Besides an iPod filled with the most eclectic assortment of music James had ever seen, there was an expensive pair of Bose Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones. House loved his music and he spent what money he would spend on himself to make experiencing the music better. 'Cause, God knew, he certainly didn't spend money on his wardrobe. The backpack also held a bottle of vicodin, five crisp, folded twenty dollar bills, and a tightly rolled pair of clean underwear. How many times had House failed to go home when an interesting case demanded his attention? James guessed more often than most department heads.

The only other things in the main compartment were three journals and two books. The journals were the Journal of Infectious Disease, Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The latter had an article marked with a yellow post-it. James turned to read the title, 'Spiegelmer attenuation of lupus nephritis'. Figures, James thought.

The books were less predictable. The first was the newest volume of 'Decision Making in Nephrology'. The title page was stamped 'Advance Copy'. Flipping quickly through the text James realized that House had made notes in margins here and there. He was also listed as a contributing editor. Obviously, some of the editing had not yet been completed to House's satisfaction. Though it wasn't too surprising that House would contribute to a text in one of his specialties, it was strange to catch him at it. This was part of his professional life he rarely talked about. Dr. Gregory House was a recognized expert in several fields of medicine. His opinion mattered to other physicians. What he had to offer the profession of medicine was so vast that the very fact that House would risk those contributions this past year with the whole illegal narcotic thing staggered James. He shook his head and looked at the second book. This item would be considered, by anyone else but James, as the most surprising of all. It was an old and well warn volume of Tennyson, 'Poems and Plays'. House had an expansive knowledge of literature that spoke of his fondness for language. To anyone who ever had an opportunity to get to know someone like House, someone with so brilliant a mind, the discovery of such a book shouldn't be at all surprising.

The masses who would only know him as the brave doctor who risked his life to save someone else would never know Greg House. They would never know that he read Tennyson or contributed to medical texts. They would never know that he felt passionately about music in equal portions to his passion for science and the integrity of medicine. They would never know from the video on TV and the internet that Greg House followed a friend down a street in the rain just to be there when that friend talked about a lost brother he had never mentioned to anybody before. Others, who only knew a little bit about House, assumed he was a selfish bastard. James knew differently. He had stopped trying to convince others years ago. What friends know about each other, the good and the bad, is what they base their relationships upon. James knew a lot about House, but not all. House knew a lot about James, but not all. They were friends and their friendship didn't need the now famous video to cement what they felt for each other. Friendship either mattered for its own sake or it didn't. For James, it mattered … a whole hell of a lot. His throat hurt and he brushed away the moisture from his face as he carefully repacked the backpack.

James thought about the other side of the media coin and House's parents. What would they think? Their son and his life was about to become the breakfast table conversation topic for America. The public loved heroes. And, for this moment in history, House was a hero however unlikely. The relationship Mr. and Mrs. House had with their son had been difficult, strained. What would the media attention do to that dynamic? Would it help or hurt?

James headed for the doctor's lounge to take a shower. He had spent the night on the sofa in his office. He needed to clean up before heading to the airport. Pulling his phone out of his pocket he called the Oncology Chief Resident as he walked to make certain that his own patient cases were being followed. House's parents would need his full attention this morning and James was determined to be there for them. He remembered the sound of House's voice telling him, 'That's what friends do'.

Yes, James agreed, that's what they do.


	9. Chapter 9

Seeing is Believing (Part 9)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

Bobby Damron tilted his head to allow the second of the three doctors at his bedside to perform the second otoscopic exam he had undergone this morning. He tried to wait until the doctor was done before tugging on his earlobe. His ear still hurt. He looked up at his mother.

"How is Dr. House?" Dorothy Damron asked.

Foreman swallowed before answering. "As well as can be expected."

Cameron gave Bobby a gentle smile and straightened up from her examination of his ear canals. "There's no inflammation," she seconded Foreman's findings, "but the tympanic membrane is a little dark."

"What does that mean? Is that what Dr. House saw?" Dorothy asked. On asking the question all three faces on the doctors shadowed slightly.

A silence that Dorothy and Bobby could not appreciate but obviously affected the doctors followed until Cameron looked at the boy's mother. "Did you see what happened?" she asked softly. It occurred to her that the mom might not know what she meant so she quickly clarified, "To Dr. House, I mean."

The three doctors watched as Mrs. Damron mentally worked through the events of yesterday before continuing. She shook her head. She had seen the cell phone video on the news that morning. She and Bobby had had no idea what was going on outside their exam room. She had opened the door to look for Dr. House and ask him if he knew how long Bobby would be in the hospital. Everything that happened after that had been a complete shock. "Just that he pushed us back into the room. I …" she looked at her son "we did not understand what was happening, could not hear the shouts." Her eyes returned to the doctors and now held a slightly haunted look. "There was so much blood…." She stopped. The emotion she felt as she recounted the experience was making her already thick wording harder to understand anyway.

Chase touched her arm lightly to get her attention. He left his hand on her arm. "No worries," he reassured her. "Dr. House is in the best of hands. I'm sure he'll be fine."

Foreman and Cameron both tried to make their faces match Chase's words. Foreman nodded toward the boy to bring the subject of the conversation back to where it, in his opinion, belonged. "We'll need to run a few tests today. We'd like to see what's going on inside your son's inner ear so we'll be doing a CT scan. We'll also be drawing some blood."

Dorothy looked at Bobby, a wan smile all she could manage. This is probably what Dr. House would have been doing. She nodded.

* * *

John and Blythe House stood at the bedside of their son. James stood outside and watched for a few moments. He had tried to prepare them, to tell them that Greg wouldn't be able to move or acknowledge them. That it was the paralytic they had to give him to allow them to ventilate his lungs. James witnessed the tearful Blythe move into the protective arms of her husband and suddenly felt that his watching was rather voyeuristic. He turned to slowly walk down the hallway to the atrium at the end and sat down heavily in the closest chair. 

The drive back to the hospital from the airport had not been comfortable. House's father fired non-stop questions at him while his mother stared out the rear passenger windows. Blythe listened but said very little. James drove and responded as completely as he could.

"We saw the video on the news in the airport," John had informed him. "Those bastards never gave Greg a chance."

James had been struck by the softened tones in the man's voice. John House had never been anything but civil and kind to James. The same could not be said for the way he addressed his son. James had only witnessed two substantive conversations between father and son in all the years he had known House. Both had been strained and both times House had said very little while his father had spoken to him like James imagined the ex-Marine would address recruits.

Though they never really talked about it, James knew House hated his father. He hated him and he loved him. That was the way with fathers and sons who didn't see the world threw similar points of view. James suspected there was a history there. He was also certain that, if there was, his friend would never talk with him about it. If it involved emotion House would avoid it like … well, emotion. James couldn't use the standard 'plague' analogy because, where House was concerned, the metaphor simply didn't work.

This morning it had been James' turn to be held accountable to the Marine's standards for communication. And for the Marine that meant the junior officer responded quickly and accurately to every inquiry from the senior. James had had no illusion about which type of officer he was in John's world. "What is the name of the doctor who did Greg's surgery?"

"Dr. Faxton. He's the Chief of Trauma and an excellent surgeon," the latter had been added to encourage and to inform. House had had the best care available in New Jersey.

"I see," John had responded, not taking his eyes off the road in front of their car. "And Dr. Cuddy saw what happened at the clinic?"

"She did," James replied. "I know she wants to speak with you both once you've seen your son."

There had been no pause. "This acute respiratory syndrome he has…."

"ARDS," The acronym was easier.

"This ARDS," John continued, "it's attacking Greg's lungs?"

James had nodded. "It damages the small air sacks that pass oxygen in the air we breathe to the blood. Because of the damage the blood moves through the lungs without picking up enough oxygen to supply all the vital organs. If that happens long enough…." James had looked at Blythe in the rear view mirror. Her eyes had been closed and she had been shivering slightly.

"What?" John had pressed. "If it happens long enough what?"

James would weigh his words carefully. How could he answer the father's questions without tearing the mother's heart out? "There could be damage to other body systems," he finally offered.

"What type of damage?"

"John." The name was spoken quietly yet held a kind of desperation. Blythe House had heard enough. The tears that ran down her face bespoke her fear. Their son was in an intensive care unit fighting for his life. James had known she didn't want to hear every detail. She wanted to see him. Touch him. She wanted to tell her only child that she was there.

Now, he waited as that mother dealt with the visual reality of her son. James could only imagine what that must be like. Pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket he dialed Brad Faxton to let him know the parents of his patient were waiting to speak to him. Once he was done with that he would have to call Lisa Cuddy.

* * *

Voices returned. One was kind, soft, distressed. Mom. The other familiar and formidable. Dad. They weren't happy. 

But then, neither was he.

Snatched images of his youth swam through the blackness around him. His mother placing candles on his birthday cake – he could smell the frosting mixed with hot wax. His dad using the wrench to tighten the chain on his bicycle – the sting from his scraped knee ached but his determination to prove he could ride well prevented him from complaining. The soft touch of the sheets on his bed late at night coupled with the gentleness of his mother's hand on his forehead when he had the flu on Christmas Eve. The biting cold of the ice in the bath and the agony that cold gave to every part of his body.

The cold seeped into his body now, surrounding him, filling him with the agony again. The blackness faded into a brilliant white. He was certain, in that instant, of two things. Moving further into the light would ensure his parents would not be happy and the cold and pain would stop.

He knew what he wanted to do.

* * *

James heard the alarms from down the hall. "You'd better get up here," he told Lisa and hung up on her. 

"Wilson? Dr. Wilson!" John House shouted from his son's bedside.

Nurses ran for House's room and James rushed to follow. He only prayed that the reason for the alarms was minor. He had never intended to bring House's parents to the hospital just in time to watch their son die.


	10. Chapter 10

Seeing is Believing (Part 10)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

It was the screaming, a slightly strangled sound, from the throat of the deaf boy that unnerved Cameron. The pain was getting worse. The anesthetic otic solutions weren't helping anymore. The child had retreated to the arms of his mother who gently rocked him in an attempt to soothe. Chase was on the phone trying to get the CT scanner cleared so that they could get Bobby in as soon as possible. Foreman had gone to Radiology in an attempt to see what the hold up was. All of them stopped what they were doing when they heard the code called over the hospital speaker system.

CODE BLUE. ICU 2-5-1. CODE BLUE. ICU 2-5-1. CODE BLUE. ICU 2-5-1.

A respiratory therapist was attempting to ventilate House's lungs with an Ambu bag and one hundred percent oxygen. His oxygen saturations remained in the low seventies. His heart rate had risen to nearly two hundred. He was having dangerous ectopy, a result of the hypoxia, and his blood pressure had dropped precipitously in response. The code team waited impatiently at his bedside for the portable X-ray machine to arrive so they could see what was happening in his chest. Dr. Faxton worked to place a radial arterial line in the patient's right wrist. As soon as the artery was cannulated Dr. Faxton drew a sample and handed it to a waiting nurse. "Stat ABGs," he ordered. Arterial blood gases would tell them just how hypoxic House was at that moment. He and Wilson both felt that House's right lung had collapsed again despite the chest tube. The diminished nature of his breath sounds due to the ARDS and the suction from the chest tube made it difficult to determine how severe the pneumothorax was with auscultation.

Lisa Cuddy arrived at ICU room 251 just as the arterial line was being connected to the bedside monitoring system. Mr. and Mrs. House stood in the hallway outside their son's room watching the activities designed to keep their son alive. Blythe clutched to the cross that hung around her neck and John clutched his wife to his side. The alarms from the bedside were relentless. Lisa wanted nothing more than to join the team in House's room and try to help. But they didn't need her help, she knew that. Helping always made her feel better, less vulnerable to the forces of death that threatened the patient. Seeing the Houses made her aware that they needed her more than she needed to address her own feelings of helplessness.

"Mr. and Mrs. House?" she said moving to stand between them and the windows of their son's ICU room. "I'm Dr. Cuddy … Lisa. I work with your son."

Blythe took her eyes off Greg long enough to meet Lisa's gaze. "You're his boss," she said matter-of-factly.

Lisa nodded, "Yes."

"Can you tell us what's going on with our son?" John asked, fear and urgency mixing to give his question an edge.

Lisa had half expected this. She knew House's father was a retired Marine pilot. She also knew that the son hated his father. Despite that, here that father was, understandably concerned and upset. She pointed to the atrium sitting area at the end of the hall. "We should go down here," she said, trying to usher them away from the room. While doing so she nodded to the nurse standing closest to the windows and gestured with her head to the blinds indicating that they should close them.

The Houses were startled slightly when the nurse moved forward and closed the blinds blocking their view of their son. "What the hell?" and "No, please," were uttered simultaneously.

Lisa tried again. "Really, we should go down here."

John was angry now. "That's our son in there. We have to know what's going on." His voice took on a stern edge that Lisa knew was designed to intimidate. How many times had she heard House do exactly the same thing?

"Mr. House," she looked directly into his eyes, "standing here is not going to help. The team in there knows what they're doing. We need to let them do it." She kept her words quiet but firm.

The portable X-ray machine rolled up to the doorway at that moment and Lisa pulled the glass door sideways to let the tech move it through and then closed the door behind. For the few seconds the door was open the unmuffled sounds of the bedside alarms again assailed the hallway. She would swear she heard James Wilson say "Thank God" as the Radiology tech entered.

Turning back to the Houses Lisa noticed that Blythe was pale. She reached out and touched the woman's arm. "I think you should sit down, Mrs. House."

John turned to regard his wife and seemed to soften as he realized that Dr. Cuddy was right. Taking his wife's arm to give her support, he finally began to move away from their son's room toward the atrium.

* * *

The cold faded as the intensity of the light increased. 'How white can white get?' he wondered. As he did the white around him pulled back. 

He found himself standing in a hallway of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Before him three people ran down the hall to reach an ICU room. He recognized all three - Robert Chase, Allison Cameron, and Eric Foreman. They all looked scared. He frowned slightly. They shouldn't be there. They had all left.

He felt an overwhelming urge to look behind him. Turning he moved up the hallway to see three other people he recognized - Lisa Cuddy and his mom and dad. Cuddy sat facing his parents who held onto each other in the familiar way married couples do when they were facing something that was frightening, something that they couldn't control.

His mother was crying. Cuddy was concerned. His father was…. What did he see in his father's face?

He could have sworn it was fear.

* * *

Every nurse, tech, and housekeeper in the hospital knew what room Dr. House was in. Hospitals, no matter how large, were really small places. Once the code was called everyone knew that there was something wrong, desperately wrong, with Dr. House – the same doctor who had been on the news all morning. The only thing faster than the rumor mill at a hospital was the rumor mill at a hospital the day after the clinic pharmacy was robbed. The actions of Dr. House had already passed into legend. It was amazing how many off duty staff members just happened to be in the clinic yesterday. The stories, some embellished, some fabricated, ran from person to person, unit to unit. 

Hadn't House been brave? Well, he should have been shouldn't he? That poor woman and her boy. Did you know they were deaf? Couldn't hear a thing. Dr. Cuddy was the one who really saved them. You wouldn't expect that from House, now, would you? He's never shown any sign of giving a damn. I always knew he was kind. It's the leg that makes him such a bastard. It was an old patient just like last time. That's silly, the pharmacy had been robbed you know. Just a ruse. They never caught the guy last time. I always thought he tried to commit suicide. No he never! Well, he's just getting what he deserves. He's a hero, saving that little boy like that. Not even sure there was a patient in that exam room. Just trying to get out of the line of fire, that's what I think. Not fast enough 'cause of the bum leg. He'd have done better if he wasn't half stoned. But the video? Didn't you see him push them? They were there and he saved them. It's as simple as that. They're coding him now. He's not going to make it. You can only cheat death so many times. He'll make it. He's made it before.

Dorothy watched the various employees as they moved about the pediatric unit performing the duties that kept the flow of care going in a hospital. No one had to tell her that the man who had saved her and her son was in trouble. She watched as they told each other.

She looked back to the sleeping figure of her boy. Dr. Chase had given him a sedative and told her they would have to wait for at least another hour before Bobby could get the CT scan he needed to see what was causing the pain in his ear. The tears slid relentlessly down her face. She didn't bother to try and wipe them away. Those tears were for two people – her son because he remained in pain and they still didn't know why and Dr. House because he was fighting for his life because of her son. Both circumstances were unfair but then, in her experience, life was never fair.


	11. Chapter 11

Seeing is Believing (Part 11)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

The loud whir of the CT scanner didn't bother Bobby at all. He held still just as he was told. He could feel the rotation of the scanner head within the housing of the unit.

Robert and Eric watched through the observation window and awaited the images as each slice was parsed by the computer and flashed up on the screen. As the slices neared the level of the vestibular ducts both doctors straightened in their chairs.

"What's that?" Eric asked out loud.

"The displacement is most likely causing the pain," Robert offered, referring to the obvious malformation noted on the left side. Robert leaned forward to get a better look. "There's fluid in the tympanic cavity. Cholesteatoma?"

"Maybe a tumor like an acoustic neurinoma," Eric replied. He blew out a breath. "Either way, it means surgery."

Robert leaned back and looked up at the boy in the scanner for a moment. "Do you think House knew which?"

"He suspected something," Eric said thoughtfully, "or he wouldn't have admitted him. Did he know what it was?" he paused before continuing. "We'll probably never know."

The initial response from Robert to this suggestion was shocked resentment. Slowly, the implications of Foreman's assessment began to ring true and Robert looked away from his one-time colleague. Everyone suspected the last hypoxic episode may have done permanent damage. No one wanted to talk about it. The chance that House might not be House any longer was too frightening to put into words.

Silently, both waited patiently for the scan to finish with the last few slices. They would need the best images to determine which condition they were looking at. Robert programmed the scanner to target the inner ear region, this time taking the smallest slices the CT scanner was capable of producing.

Doing so gave him something to think about other than House.

* * *

It was like being a goldfish in a bowl. 

Allison worked to finish the History & Physical note on Robert Damron's chart. She sat at the desk in the department conference room. A steady stream of onlookers passed by the department stopping to gaze at the lettering on his office door. Some were patients currently in PPTH, some were visitors, some were employees – all of them were curious. They wanted to see the place where Dr. House worked. For the first time since she had come to work with House, Allison wished the walls were not made of glass.

As she typed she thought about the new type of fame House now had and the attention that would garner. He would hate it. Everyone who knew him at all understood that he didn't need affirmation, didn't desire acclaim. She looked through the wall that connected the conference room with his office.

Already the office was beginning to fill with flowers, cards, faxed messages, and other gifts from well wishers. Cuddy had no other place to put them so she opted to have her staff bring the items to his office. Allison made a mental note to check House's email and to print and empty his inbox to prevent bounced messages. She was certain he hadn't bothered to change his password.

It had annoyed her that House used her like a secretary at times. It was chauvinistic beyond belief. But, it had allowed her to figure him out a bit. He was a man that was incredibly hard to figure out. Reading his mail had given her a small look into what his life must have been like. The sheer number of demands for his time was staggering. Despite his misanthropy House was well respected in medicine. He had a reputation as a bastard but an honest and brilliant bastard. Even Vogler had want House to be a spokesman because when Dr. Gregory House spoke he influenced others. That, and the fact that his expertise in diagnostic medicine meant that he saved lives - lots of lives. He was disliked but he was also envied.

The voyeurs that funneled past his door only knew what they thought one poor quality video and hospital rumors told them about House. They didn't know, just as she didn't know, what he felt at the moment the robber shot him. They didn't know, just as she didn't know, if he would live. They didn't know, just as she didn't know, if the thing he would most likely be remembered for was a simple act of bravery or the mind that others desiderated.

Most likely be remembered for? Was she already giving up on his chances for survival?

There was a time when she had wanted nothing more than for House to love her. Her need for him had felt so strong. But, as was usual, he had seen the real reasons for her need and with an honesty that hurt as much as it illuminated he confronted her with it – coolly, calmly, without emotion. In an equally unanticipated move, when she had needed him to reach out to her and she was certain he would not, he did. 'I'm proud of you,' he had said.

House was the most infuriating person she had ever met. To some extent, he was also the most influential man in her life. Cameron had changed, in very tangible and fundamental ways, since meeting him. She simply could not imagine who or what she might be without having known him. The thought of House dying now made her feel as if the light was being drained from the world around her.

Fighting the tears, she realized she had stopped typing and was staring at the computer screen, unseeing. Shaking her head to center her attention back on the task at hand, she bent back over the keyboard to complete her note and print it for the patient's file.

* * *

Blythe sat at her son's bedside and gently stroked the back of his hand. Her husband had gone to find military grade coffee if it could be found. Greg remained paralyzed by some medication and he now had two tubes coming out of his chest. The doctors had told them that his lung had collapsed again. The pressure from the respirator had caused it – the respirator that was forcing oxygen into his lungs because he couldn't breathe on his own. Because some crazed druggie shot him while he was trying to save a woman and young boy. 

The tears rolled down her cheeks again. She dabbed at them with her handkerchief.

Everyone had been kind. Doctors and nurses expressed their concern and care for their son. James was just wonderful. So was Dr. Cuddy. And the young doctors who had worked for her son. They had all recently left Greg's department. Each of them had refused to talk about the circumstances of their departure but both she and John had a good idea why.

She had no delusions about her son. Greg was not well liked by most of the people he worked with. That was as it had always been. He had always had a few, a very few, close friends with whom he shared the parts of his life he was willing to share. James Wilson was such a friend and Blythe thanked God for the man. James kept Greg from being too lonely. At least, she prayed that he did.

Greg had carried the loneliness of his childhood into his adult life. Blythe blamed herself for that. She should have done more to get Greg involved in the normal activities of boys his age when he was growing up. Somehow her son had always resisted joining. He was athletic and played sports – lacrosse and basketball mostly. Greg was also musical. By the age of thirteen Greg could already play four instruments. His favorite was the old guitar John had bought him for Christmas one year. But her son never really gained large groups of friends from participating on teams or in bands. He preferred the company of books, as her mother used to say. She had never known a boy to read so much.

She and John always knew their son would succeed at whatever he chose to put his mind to. He read so many things, and different things, while growing up that they never really knew what he wanted to do. When he told them he was going to go to medical school they were a little surprised, though. Not that Greg wasn't a good doctor, without question he was. It had always struck her as odd that her son, who shied away from dealing with people so much of his life, would choose such a profession.

But then, it wasn't about the people for Greg. It was about proving he was able to beat the diseases. Blythe understood better than her son thought she did. Greg trusted science, he didn't trust people.

And that was another thing she blamed herself for.

There had been times in his youth when she should have done things differently. When she should have intervened. When she should have stopped John. She hadn't done it. He son grew up thinking he could never make his father happy, make him proud. She had tried to tell him that John WAS proud. They both were. John had never been a man able to share his feelings with Greg. Their son had grown up to be the same, a man who wasn't able to express his own emotions. They were more alike than either of them would admit. Greg didn't believe her when she tried to tell him how his father felt – the love and pride he had for his son. Somewhere along the way he had stopped trying to believe. And when he did the part of Greg that could reach out to the world and try to belong had died.

Or had it?

Greg had saved those two people and not with medical science. Her son. The man who had so much anger, so much resentment toward his father had done exactly what John would have done.

Now James and Dr. Faxton said that act of charity might kill him.

She didn't think she could bear it if he died. Sons weren't supposed to die. Not her son. Not her only son. Dear God in heaven, not Greg.


	12. Chapter 12

Seeing is Believing (Part 12)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

The three physicians that currently made up the Department of Diagnostic Medicine at PPTH arrived back in the conference room at just after noon. They had returned to work after making sure House was stable. There was nothing they could do for him except to care for the only patient admitted to his service. They turned their attention to Bobby Damron's case.

Allison and Robert sat at the conference room table while Eric paced the room slowly, reading the patient's chart as he moved. Bobby's platelet count was less than one hundred thousand. The results of the coagulation panel were still pending. The whiteboard held three symptoms written in Cameron's hand: ear pain, tympanic fluid, and thrombocytopenia. He would not be able to undergo surgery with so low a platelet count. If a mass was causing the fluid in the tympanic cavity as they suspected there was no way they could remove it until they corrected the cause of the thrombocytopenia.

"It could be autoimmune," Allison said to the room.

Robert offered, "Or an infection."

Eric stopped his pacing in front of the whiteboard and turned to them. "There's no history of anemia," he observed.

"We should check T- and B-lymphocyte function," Allison interjected, "to try and rule out an infection and do a blood smear and ANA to check for autoimmune disorders."

"I'll do the blood smear and get a culture," Robert said, standing.

"We need to get him into the MRI," Eric said, "today."

They looked at each other. Foreman had managed to schedule the MRI for tomorrow morning but the low platelet count suggested urgency. All of them knew that if House were there he'd want the results of the MRI now and they would have found a way to get them.

"And we'll need Cuddy to authorize it," Eric continued. "I want to do this with her support."

Hospital support was not something House was ever particularly concerned about. "She shouldn't have any trouble with an MRI," Robert reasoned.

"I'll call," Eric moved to the phone.

"I'll run the ANA and lymphocyte functions," Allison said as she moved to follow Robert to the door and then the lab. "You'll talk with the mom?"

Eric nodded with the phone already to his ear. "I'll get consent."

* * *

The day pushed well past noon. There had been no further crises with House. His vital signs remained stable and he was being adequately ventilated for the time being. Early that afternoon James had taken his friend's parents to their hotel to checking. Blythe remained there to rest for a few hours while James took John by Hertz to rent a car and the two of them returned to the hospital.

When they returned to ICU they found Lisa Cuddy sitting at House's bedside. She was talking to him quietly. "We've been getting calls and email messages all day. There was even a telegram. I didn't know you could still send one of those.

"The governor called." She smiled slightly. "I resisted the urge to ask him if he failed Seatbelts 101 in school. Still, it was nice of him to think about the hospital. He specifically asked about how you were doing."

Jim grinned. Witnessing the repartee that Cuddy and House always enjoyed was one of the perks of knowing them. He almost hated interrupting. "How is he doing?" he asked.

Lisa looked up at the two men as they advanced into the room. She glanced back at House as she answered, "Stable," she responded softly, a touch of pensiveness in her voice.

"You don't sound all that optimistic," John observed.

She turned back to look at the older of the two men.

Dr. Cuddy tried to place the medical mask over her features – the same mask that John had seen on his son's face time and time again. She was not as practiced as Greg was, however, because John was able to see the fleeting aspect of a deep sorrow before she was able to prevent it. That glimpse had told John all he really needed to know and some things he wished he didn't. His son was stable now but the doctors didn't know if he had suffered any brain or other organ damage from the lack of oxygen the collapsed lung had caused. Dr. Cuddy's inability to hide her concern suggested the severity of Greg's condition.

He stepped up close to the bed and looked down at the face of his son. Was the mind John remembered still inside the body of the man beneath all those tubes and wires? Was Greg still in there?

"He'll make it through this," Lisa tried to reassure House's father.

John gave an almost imperceptible nod. "Is that what they train doctors to say when they aren't sure of the situation?" he challenged.

Lisa met James eyes for a moment before looking back into John's face. "It's what I choose to believe," she told him. "Your son is one of the strongest people I've ever met. If anyone can go through all he's been through and still practice medicine the way he does," she paused for a moment, weighing her words before continuing, "then I have to believe that he has strength enough to overcome now."

* * *

There was nothing but black all around. Cuddy's voice faded and there was quiet now. Even then he knew he was not alone. Someone remained near. He didn't know who and he wasn't certain he cared.

Pain always did that to him. It was worse at times, better at times. Now it was mostly worse. The pain was impacted by things most people didn't spend time worrying about. Things like the weather, the need to breathe, the relative closeness of family or friends.

He had wanted the pain to stop - really wanted it to stop.

That would have caused more pain just not his own. The light promised the end of his suffering but he knew it would add to the anguish of others. He had wanted nothing more than to move into that light and knew he could not. The reason he couldn't was the most unexpected thing. He couldn't because the others mattered.

But the pain….

* * *

The heart rate alarm began to chime on House's bedside monitor. A nurse was at the bedside in seconds. John House sat in the chair next to his son's bed and watched as the nurse assessed the alarm.

"His heart rate is a little high," Cheryl informed the father after she listened to the patient's lungs and making certain the oxygen saturation was acceptable. The most likely cause of the tachycardia was pain. The paralytic only stopped the patient from moving; it did nothing for pain or anxiety. He needed analgesia. "He needs something for pain," she explained as she turned to leave the room. "I'll be right back."

John didn't say anything. He watched the gentle rise and fall of Greg's chest that was synchronized with the sighing of the ventilator. He listened to the low blipping of the heart monitor. The heart was beating, the lungs breathing. Life remained. Where there was life, there was pain. He had learned that in combat.

Pain was something he had dealt with to protect the things he cared about – like his family. He clenched a fist and slammed it down on his knee. This was not supposed to be happening. His son should not be lying here with a robber's bullet in him. His son wasn't a soldier or a cop. Greg was a doctor, a scientist, a man of reason. What was the world coming to when a doctor could get shot – twice – while in a hospital just doing his job? And, why the hell couldn't the doctors caring for his son tell him whether his son was going to be all right?

His own physician had once told him that medicine was not an exact science. That was the kind of rubbish that had always upset Greg. His son didn't believe that.

"There's always an answer," Greg would say. "Sometimes we just aren't smart enough to find it."

Greg had set out to find as many of the answers as he could. John admired that in him. In many ways Greg was like a good tactician – he battled against disease with superior intelligence and skill. He would have made an excellent soldier.

That, John knew, would never have happened because he himself had been a soldier. His son wanted to be anything but like him.

Well, he thought, the boy got his wish. He felt remorse instantly.

Cheryl returned with a syringe in her hand. "I'm giving your son some morphine," she told Mr. House. He nodded to her. She could have sworn she saw moisture on his face.

* * *

Jim rubbed his face as he waited for the light to turn green. He was on his way back to the hotel to pick up Blythe.

"Damn it!"

The sound of his own voice startled him a little. He slammed his palms on the steering wheel. He was angry.

He wasn't mad because he was performing taxi duty for House's parents. It was his pleasure to help them. He was angry because he had to do it, because his friend lay in intensive care, because the whole damn, infuriating situation was senseless.

The rumors had been flying all day. House was an asshole so he obviously deserved to be shot.

True, House could be an ass. No one knew that better than he did. And when House was being an ass he deserved to be castigated. But this situation wasn't that.

The light turned green and Jim took pains to keep from punching the accelerator. His thoughts pointed a finger of blame at his hypocrisy. Hadn't his first thought on learning House had been shot again been the assumption that his friend had somehow antagonized the gunman?

Fact was none of the events that had placed House near death had been situations he had caused. The only exception might be, and this was a stretch, the first time he was shot. The shooter, to this day, remained unknown and the reason for the shooting mere speculation. Everyone felt that it must be someone House had angered, but what if it had just been some unhinged individual? It wasn't like such a thing was unheard of.

And could anyone blame a blocked aneurysm on House's personality? What about the fact that two people, strangers to House, were still alive and unharmed because of him?

Jim gripped the steering wheel tightly and forced himself to drive with the flow of traffic. His jaw ached slightly from grinding his teeth.

The whole fucking thing was unfair. He knew he needed to calm the frustration and fury he felt building. Blythe House didn't need to see it and Jim shouldn't let it take hold. Life was unfair, he told himself. He'd just have to live with it. Problem was it wasn't his own ability to live that he worried about.


	13. Chapter 13

There are a lot of thanks due for the this story. The bulk goes to my principal beta-reader Allie. I do hope you are enjoying the tale. As always, all feedback is sincerely appreciated.

Seeing is Believing (Part 13)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

It had been a very long day. Lisa Cuddy wanted nothing more than to go home, take the longest shower of her life, and drop into bed. She still had some things to do before she could go anywhere. Lisa wanted to check on House's patient. She had been keeping tabs on the case throughout the day between trips to check on House and dealing with hospital stakeholders and media representatives.

Bobby Damron and his mother had had a bad day as well. The pain in Bobby's ear was not being caused by an infection. Lisa had known the case wouldn't be that simple. If it had House would have never given it a second thought.

Cameron had thought the problem might be autoimmune. But then, Lisa reasoned, Cameron always thought the problem was autoimmune.

An MRI of the boy's brain confirmed the left tympanic cavity mass. Wilson suggested they screen for lymphoma. When done the B-lymphocyte screening was inconclusive. Surgery would have to be done to remove the mass for pathology but, as Foreman had suggested, they would have to correct the thrombocytopenia first or the child would bleed to death.

The blood smear Chase analyzed did show abnormally small platelets and a low red cell count that suggested hemolytic anemia. Cameron had found T-lymphocyte abnormalities. The results meant something autoimmune. What kind of autoimmune was yet to be determined. Without knowing what kind of disorder they were dealing with meant they couldn't definitively treat Bobby. That meant they couldn't do the surgery.

And that meant they couldn't stop the ear pain. Because of the increased pain in the ear the team had resorted to keeping Bobby sedated, never the optimal situation for so young a child.

Lisa found the boy sleeping and the mother resting in the chair next to her son's bed.

Dorothy saw Dr. Cuddy at the door. She looked to make sure her son was still asleep and rose.

"How's he doing?" Lisa asked waiting to speak until Mrs. Damron could see her face.

Dorothy gave a small nod, "He sleeps because of the medicine Dr. Chase gave him."

Lisa looked at Bobby again. She prayed the Mrs. Damron would not ask her about a prognosis. Maybe it was because she was tired, maybe because she knew whatever the answer to the boy's mystery was it wouldn't be simple. She couldn't bring herself to offer this mother any platitudes. Something was very wrong with her son. House had known that. He had a suspicion from a simple clinic exam. After a full day of evaluation using the most advanced diagnostic equipment the hospital had to offer House's old team had simply confirmed that House's hunch was right. They did not know what the exact pathology was, how they were going to treat it, nor did they have a good idea of the boy's prognosis.

In short, they needed House. The thought gave Lisa a pang.

Mrs. Damron didn't ask about her son's prognosis. When she spoke again she asked a very different question.

"How is Dr. House doing?"

The question startled Lisa a little, like one of those weird coincidences. She met the woman's gaze. Before she could answer, Mrs. Damron spoke again.

"Could I see him?"

* * *

Blythe sat with her son's hand cradled in her own. John stood looking out at the sky waiting for the darkness to deepen enough to reveal the stars. Neither of them had said much during the evening. They contented themselves with being together and being close to their son. 

Greg had slowly improved over the past few hours. His oxygen saturation, which had hovered around barely acceptable after the lung collapse that morning had begun to slowly climb. The doctors had given him anti-inflammatory agents, steroids to help improve his lung function. Dr. Faxton had said that his lungs were regaining compliance, whatever that meant.

John asked some pointed questions to clarify Greg's condition. Blythe never really understood much of the medical jargon. James Wilson had seen her confusion and said simply, "He's getting better."

As long as he continued to get better there was a chance that the doctors would try to wake him up in the morning. There was something wonderful and horrible about the prospect. It would be a moment of truth. Was their son all there, as John put it, or was his brain permanently damaged? What would they do if it was?

It was easier, for now, to simply wait. Wait and pray. They did both.

That was until Dr. Cuddy and another woman arrived.

* * *

Dorothy's hands shot to cover her mouth when she caught her first glimpse of Dr. House. She had known he was injured but she had never expected this. She waited outside the intensive care room while Dr. Cuddy asked the people inside if she could visit. Now that she was here she wasn't sure asking had been the right thing. 

It took a great effort to keep from crying. Dr. Cuddy had explained that he had suffered some complications from the gunshot wound. Dorothy didn't really know what or how, but the sight of her son's doctor, the man who seemed to know right away that something was really wrong with Bobby and believed he could help, the stranger that had saved both their lives looked like a kind of alien in the mangle of tubes and wires and bed sheets.

She had wondered about it all day as he son underwent test after test. Why had Dr. House done it? Why had he saved them? From everything she had been able to gather by watching the conversations of the hospital staff, Dr. House was a bit of a stranger to just about everybody. It didn't seem like anyone knew him very well. The reports were so opposite, strange.

Only one thing was constant. Dr. House was the best doctor any of them knew. And he thought he could help Bobby. Maybe that was all there was to it. He was a doctor and Bobby needed his help.

If that were the case she owed him something – maybe everything. Somehow, she wanted to be able to let him know that. Looking at him now, she realized that she might never be able to tell him how grateful she was.

Then she saw the two people who had been in the room when she and Dr. Cuddy arrived. One look at their faces and she instantly knew who they were. These were Dr. House's parents. She saw the pain and hope in the woman's face and recognized another mother with an ill son.

It was then that she could no longer hold back her tears.

Everything she had been trying to convince herself of had been a lie. Yes, she wanted to thank Dr. House but that hadn't been why she had asked to come. Somewhere, deep down, she had prayed that the situation with him hadn't been as bad as everyone seemed to think it was.

People sensationalize don't they?

Maybe he wasn't at death's door after all. Maybe he would be able to help her son because the doctors that had taken over for him didn't know what was going to happen with Bobby. Dorothy had hoped that Dr. House might, after everything he had already done, tell everyone what was wrong with Bobby and, more importantly, how to fix it.

Seeing him now she wondered how she could have been so selfish. She had to get away from there.

* * *

Blythe looked over Dr. Cuddy's shoulder and saw the young woman turn to move away. She could see the anguish on her face. Blythe understood. Instinctively she knew what the woman had come for.

* * *

Dorothy moved up the hall as quickly as she could without running. She had nearly reached the doors at the end near the atrium when someone grabbed her arm. When she stopped and turned to see who it was she stood face to face with Blythe House.

* * *

They sat in the atrium for nearly an hour before Blythe slowly lead Dorothy back to Greg's ICU room. John nodded his approval to Dorothy as she asked if she could see his son. Lisa Cuddy stood with John House near the window as both mother's approached the bedside. 

Blythe had held Dorothy Damron's hand as the young woman told her about Bobby and their encounter with Greg in the clinic. Blythe didn't have to ask any questions. Dorothy had wanted to talk to her, to tell her about what Greg had done for them – about what she had hoped he could still do for Bobby.

They shed tears together.

It did not matter that one of them was deaf and one of them much older. It didn't matter that there was over forty years of difference in the ages of their sons. It didn't matter that one of them was a wife and the other widowed. None of that mattered at all. They both wanted the same thing at that very moment. They both wanted their children to be well.


	14. Chapter 14

Seeing is Believing (Part 14)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

She had slept. Lisa Cuddy woke up early Monday morning and saw that the night sky had not yet fully receded from the approaching day. Looking at the digital alarm on her bedside stand, she saw that it was just after five o'clock. The fact that no one had awakened her meant that nothing untoward had happened during the night.

Just to make sure, she checked her pager and her cellular phone. No messages on either. She stretched herself out of bed and headed to the kitchen. Coffee was in order, then a shower, and then the world of Princeton-Plainsboro.

Lisa wondered if the good fortune that had given her five hours of uninterrupted sleep would hold that morning. She really didn't want to think about the issues the day would bring. As she filled the coffee pot with water and flipped the power on she couldn't help but prioritize the myriad things that would demand her attention as soon as she got to work. Whenever possible, Lisa liked to take control of the agenda for the day. She was rarely successful, but she did try.

She wanted to know what Bobby Damron's platelet count was this morning. Were the steroids for an as yet unknown autoimmune disorder helping with the boy's ability to clot? If so, they might be able to schedule surgery for later that day to remove the mass. She would have to check in with Chase, Cameron, and Foreman first thing.

But that wasn't the biggest issue that she would face when she returned to her office. No, there would be more calls, more media questions, and the Board meeting hastily scheduled for two that afternoon to review the contingency plans for revamping the clinic security protocols. Even all of that paled to the thing that gave her the greatest concern.

They were going to wake House today. She poured and then sipped her steaming coffee and tried not to worry about what they would find when they did.

* * *

Jim dressed slowly. He had slept hard last night. He was always stiff and lethargic after sleeping that way. It was nothing that caffeine and movement wouldn't cure. The call that he had made to Princeton-Plainsboro upon waking had encouraged him to take his time this morning. House had stayed stable all night. His parents had called twice during the night but otherwise, the night shift had been uneventful for the nursing staff in ICU. 

On asking to be transferred to pediatrics he had discovered that Bobby Damron had slept fitfully but that his pain did not seem to be getting worse. The nurses were still waiting for the A.M. lab results before calling Dr. Cameron, who was the physician on call for Diagnostics today. Jim asked to be notified of the results as well, since he had been consulted to rule out cancer once they had found the mass.

He checked his cellular phone once he was done blow-drying his hair. Dr. Faxton had left him a message. They were going to turn off the paralytic at ten. By eleven that morning he should know.

After reading the message Jim picked up his pace. He had a stop to make before getting to the hospital. It had been a long time since he had been to temple. This morning seemed like a good time to make another visit.

* * *

The whiteboard inside the Department of Diagnostic Medicine had not changed since the day before. Four symptoms were listed on the board. The last, 'MASS' written in all capital letters, had been added after the MRI. 

Allison entered the conference room with Bobby Damron's lab results in her hand. Robert had made coffee and Eric had stopped for bagels on his way to the hospital. Dropping the results onto the table in front of where Robert was seated, Allison headed for the coffeemaker.

"Anything?" Robert asked around the bit of bagel he was still chewing.

"Platelets are up, but not by much," she replied while pouring her coffee. "103."

"The ANA was negative," Robert offered, reviewing the results himself.

Eric half laughed. "It's never lupus," he said as he grabbed a bagel out of the bag from the bakery. "We'll need to look at another blood smear."

Robert nodded. "Even if the platelets are more mature, doing surgery with the count below 150 is dangerous."

"We could give him some FFP and platelets before surgery," Allison offered as she moved to the table. "That should help prevent excessive bleeding."

"It'd be better if we knew what was causing the anemia before slicing into his head." Robert's retort wasn't too sharp but it still elicited a glare from Allison.

"If the pain increases…" Allison began, trying to keep her voice even. The last thing she wanted was to start an argument this early in the morning.

"If the pain increases we won't have a choice," Eric finished for her. He looked challengingly at Chase. "We'll have to get whatever it is out of there before it puts any pressure on his brainstem."

Robert knew he was right so said nothing further. He opted, instead, to take a sip of his coffee.

Allison sat down opposite Robert and wrapped her hands around the warm coffee mug, staring into her hot liquid rather than drinking it. "Did they say when?" she asked.

Everyone knew they were no longer talking about their patient.

It was Robert who responded. "Ten o'clock."

* * *

The hallway outside House's ICU room was crowded. Drs. Wilson, Cuddy, Foreman, Cameron, and Chase looked on through the transparent walls while John, Blythe, and Dr. Faxton stood at the bedside as the clock neared 10:40 in the morning. The paralytics and sedation had been shut off nearly an hour before. Blythe held her son's hand as everyone patiently waited for evidence that Greg House was waking. 

It was Blythe who first noticed the change - jerking of his arms and legs. The jerks were mild and Blythe uttered a soft "Oh," drawing everyone's attention.

Dr. Faxton, noticing the myoclonic activity that meant the paralytic effect was nearly worn off, bent over the head of the bed, "House? Can you open your eyes?"

* * *

The need to resist being pulled from the safety of the blackness overwhelmed him. He hung onto the nothingness around him. If he submitted to the voice calling to him, all he could expect was pain. He didn't want the ache anymore – the feeling that constantly nagged at him, boring into his every waking moment, defining the limitations of his world. No, not yet.

* * *

"Greg?" John called his son's name softly from the foot of the bed. "Wake up, son." 

Blythe gripped her son's hand more tightly.

Out in the hall, everyone was holding their breath.

* * *

The voice was now voices. They were pulling him. So too was the promise of the return of the old familiar torment – only this time it would be worse. He wasn't sure how he knew it, but he was certain waking would be misery. 

'No,' he tried to tell them.

* * *

"House! Open your eyes," Dr. Faxton repeated.

* * *

He didn't want to face them … it. 

Even as he thought it, the reality of the pain, at first a dull and far away awareness, began to swell, sharpen. His distress began to increase and he tried to pull back again. He was unable to retreat from it. The horror of it grew and the misery expanded. This wasn't ordinary pain … this was white hot agony that erupted in his right leg and shot up through his entire body.

'No!' he tried to yell. 'Oh, God, NO!'

* * *

The jerks grew in intensity until House wasn't just slowly waking, he was suddenly violently alert. His eyes flew open but he saw little of the room. He tried to reach for whatever it was that kept him from shouting to the people around him. He had to shout, to scream, to get their attention. God, the pain! Someone had to stop the pain! 

Dr. Faxton grabbed House's left hand as the jerking became a frantic energy designed to pull at the tubes and wires around him. He was shouting to get House's attention, "House! You're in the ICU! HOUSE!"

Blythe was forced away from her son by the violence of his reaction to waking, she let go of his hand as she stood. Chase, Cameron, and Foreman rushed to the bed and restrained the hands and legs not held by Dr. Faxton.

Alarms sounded from every piece of equipment that had an alarm as House's heart rate skyrocketed and his convulsive struggle to free himself from the agony caused him to bite on the endotracheal tube in his mouth. His blood pressure reached dangerous highs and his oxygen saturation plummeted. The ventilator couldn't force air into his lungs. Hypoxia was setting in again.

"NURSE! Four milligrams I.V. lorazepam now!" Dr. Faxton yelled the order as he watched Greg House's entire torso arch upward.

Eric tried to shine a penlight in House's eyes. The pupils were reactive. "This isn't a seizure," he told the others.

"He's in pain!"

This last was offered from the door. Lisa Cuddy stood just inside the room. The look on her face spoke of comprehension and fear. "Look at his face," she said in a near whisper.

James Wilson stared into the terrified face of his friend as he yelled over his shoulder, "WHERE'S THAT SEDATIVE?"

The nurse arrived then with the medication in hand. Working around the doctors who held the thrashing patient, she administered the lorazepam through the main infusion line.

It took only ten seconds for the sedative to take effect, but it felt like an hour. Finally spent of his energy reserve and under the influence of the benzodiazepine, Greg House lay still. The ventilator alarm was the first to stop assailing those gathered in the ICU room as the soft sigh of pressure resumed and oxygen was once again successfully forced into his lungs. Slowly, tentatively, those restraining him let go and stood back.

James Wilson reached up and silenced the monitor alarms. "Nurse, four milligrams of morphine," he ordered. The heart rate was still over 170, but the blood pressure was returning to the upper limits of normal. The oxygen saturation was rising, but slowly.

The nurse nodded and moved away quickly.

The sudden shocked quiet in the room was interrupted only by the soft sobbing of Blythe House from the protective embrace of her husband.


	15. Chapter 15

Seeing is Believing (Part 15)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

"What the hell happened?" John House had seen enough death and carnage in his life. He was a marine. Injury and death were a part of a soldier's reality. What he had just witnessed shook him. What he wanted right now was an explanation.

The physicians in the room looked at each other, searching faces for some evidence that someone understood. Eventually, everyone was looking at Lisa Cuddy.

It was James Wilson who addressed her, "Cuddy? How do you know it's pain?"

Lisa was trying to remember the sequence of events just after the shooting. The gun had gone off and House fell. When she got to him he was holding onto his leg for dear life. Initially she had been certain he had been injured there. It wasn't until the Damrons had opened the door to the exam room that anyone had seen the blood on the floor under his shoulder.

"Dr. Cuddy?" Dr. Faxton queried, trying to prompt her to speak.

Lisa looked up at the expectant faces, choosing to settle her gaze on House's parents. "The look on his face just now," she repeated quietly. "That's how he looked just before he lost consciousness."

She looked away from the older couple and moved toward House. "He acted like his leg was hurting him," she remembered as she approached the bed. "He twisted around to close the door to the exam room before the bul…" she stopped herself from finishing the sentence. House's parents didn't need to hear the gory details. She wasn't sure she wanted to remember them either. "There was pain in his face. I tried to get him to let go of his leg so I could see if he had been hurt but his grip was too strong." Gently, she pulled the sheets away from the right side of the bed exposing the lower portion of his thigh.

The nurse returned with the morphine just as everyone's eyes in the room were drawn to the scar on House's leg.

* * *

"Tell me about Greg," Blythe said.

Eric looked at her. She was not unlike his own mother, dignified with quiet strength. Only Blythe House did not have Alzheimer's. "What would you like to know?"

Blythe turned to face Eric and looked into him, much like House often did. He could tell that Blythe had the same ability to see the motives behind the words or actions of those she scrutinized. Of course, he thought, it would make perfect sense. House was his mother's son – and his father's.

"Did you like working for my son?"

The question was direct, more so than Eric would have expected. Try as he might, he couldn't keep the surprise out of his face. She gave him a small knowing smile.

"You didn't," Blythe answered her own question. "Why?" This last was asked gently. There was no accusation in her voice. Definitely not like House.

Eric looked away from her and back through the glass of the ICU room. It had been just over two hours since they had attempted to wake House. Currently he was undergoing an EEG to try to see if there were significant neurological abnormalities. If House remained stable on the sedation through this test, the plan was to do a PET scan to determine how much pain he was experiencing. The x-rays of his leg didn't show structural abnormalities, and the portable MRI was inconclusive for nerve damage. They needed the larger MRI imager to get the degree of detail they needed to determine if there had been further axonal damage in his right thigh. Though such damage would be rare from simply twisting, there was nothing normal about House's leg after the infarction. No one wanted to risk moving House for either imaging study until they knew more about his neurological status. One thing was certain; House's medical team wasn't going to risk waking him again until they knew how to deal with his pain.

But House's mother wasn't asking him about her son's current condition. She wanted to know about her son before he was shot. Eric couldn't get the image of the last time he saw his own mother out of his mind. What should he tell her?

"I made a mistake," he began, still looking at his old boss. His voice was low and he spoke slowly. "We made a mistake. A patient, a young woman, lost her life. I was filled with guilt, but House …." He paused and looked back at Blythe, whose face was patient, expecting. "He wanted to know what we had missed. I guess he worried that if we didn't learn from our mistake, figure out what we should have noticed, find the truth, we wouldn't be able to help the next patient who came to us with a similar problem." Eric thought he saw recognition in Blythe's eyes. "I couldn't get past the emotion. House couldn't get beyond the medicine."

"Did he find out what it was?" she asked.

Eric nodded. "Yes."

"And do you think you're a better physician now?"

He didn't answer immediately. Glancing into the ICU room again to check the steady pattern on the EEG display, he knew that he was. Despite everything he felt about who and what House was, being around him had made Eric a better diagnostician. He had learned.

"I am," he admitted without looking back.

She didn't ask him anything more. They stood quietly in the hall until Eric's beeper began to sound.

* * *

"We'll have to do surgery," Dr. Wilson explained to Dorothy Damron. Bobby had required some significant sedation to calm him down. The pain in his ear had gotten much worse. Dr. Chase and Dr. Cameron were at Bobby's bedside. They were giving her son platelets to keep him from bleeding and antibiotics to prevent infection, both potentially deadly complications if they did this surgery. She stood at the far side of his room, trying to understand as she looked from the face of one doctor to the other.

"But you don't know what it is," Dorothy challenged. No one had been able to tell her what was exactly wrong with her son. She felt as if she was in a state of mild continuous panic. Everything these doctors told her was vague. They didn't know the exact nature of the problem, but they wanted to cut into her son's head. The mass might be cancer or it might be nothing. "How do you know if it will help to do surgery?"

"The mass is placing pressure on his middle ear," Dr. Foreman told her. "Once we remove it we can do a biopsy to find out what it is and if we need to treat him further."

"Removing it should take away his pain?"

"We believe so," Foreman said.

"But you're not sure." This last was not a question.

It was Dr. Wilson who answered. "We know the mass is there and the pain is there. You should let us do this."

Dorothy took the clipboard with the consent form from Dr. Wilson and looked at it. She knew she should read it word for word before signing it. She honestly didn't care what it said. Signing it meant that her son would go to surgery. Signing it meant that her son could get away from his pain. Signing it meant her son might bleed to death.

She signed it.

* * *

Lisa Cuddy stood in the observation suite of OR 4 and watched as Foreman made the initial incision just posterior to Bobby Damron's left ear. She would have to leave in a few minutes. She was already late for the emergency Board meeting. Truth be told, Lisa would prefer not to attend at all.

What would she report? The local police hadn't found either of the robbers, although they did have a lead. They couldn't discuss the case because they didn't want to compromise their investigation. The security guard who was on duty in the clinic on Saturday had been reassigned to parking lot duty. His inaction resulted in the Chief of Security ordering him to undergo crisis intervention training. Greg House was still in critical condition, and the patient he had risked his life to save was undergoing emergency surgery.

It was not exactly a banner day at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.


	16. Chapter 16

Seeing is Believing (Part 16)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

Brad Faxton worked with the nurses in ICU to pull the first of two chest tubes placed in his patient, Greg House. The first chest tube placed after the surgery that removed the bullet from the robbery had done its job but now was more a risk for infection. The purse-string suture was tied and the wound cleansed and dressed with Vaseline-impregnated gauze and secured with foam tape. The second chest tube placed the day after surgery would remain in for one more day.

House remained sedated but Faxton didn't paralyze him again. His lung compliance was good and ventilating him was becoming much easier. Now that the EEG was done and the results were normal, the next logical step would be an MRI of the leg and a PET scan of his brain. Both tests were scheduled for the following day.

There was something uncomfortable about being the primary physician for someone like House. First, no matter what anyone said, House was an ass. He actually blackmailed Ayrsman. He was also one hell of a physician. True, the medicine didn't change because of the individual patient, but the risks sure did. That and this man's father was one tough bastard. John House asked the hard questions, checking every test result, questioning every procedure. Not that Brad blamed him. His son had been in critical condition twice in one year from bullet wounds. God-damned House. If, for any reason, the medical management of this case wasn't the best Brad would find himself in Ayrsman's place. Everyone he didn't want to piss off right now had the last name House.

Problem was this was a very high profile case. Dr. Cuddy had been handling the press, but Brad's name was mentioned daily. For better or worse he would be linked to the care provided for a hero. What House did was righteous. Despite the downside, there was a nagging feeling of privilege associated with being the doctor responsible for treating the man who saved two lives.

There was also what Jim Wilson said. "I'm not sure the world is ready to lose a mind like his." Brad had to admit that Wilson was right. House had to be in there. The EEG results were promising, but it would another day before he could be sure.

'God-damn it, House,' Brad thought, 'be in there and be all there.'

* * *

John House stood outside the ICU room and watched as Dr. Faxton finished removing the tube from his son's chest. Everything the doctors told him amounted to one huge hill of useless beans. Greg was one hell of a doctor. Everyone agreed about that. It didn't matter one God-damned bit if he was liked. Popularity was for cheerleaders and politicians. What Greg could do with his brain and medicine mattered. 

So why the hell couldn't any of these doctors tell him whether or not his son's brain was okay?

His son's lungs were dependent on a respirator. He was peeing into a fucking bag. And the crater in his leg – God! John knew his son had suffered some kind of leg problem because of that aneurysm years ago. Greg had never seen fit to tell him about how bad it was. What must the pain be like? If the pain he had seen in his son's face that day was any indication…. Christ almighty.

John didn't want to think about it. At least his son still had his leg. He could still walk.

"And he does," Blythe had told him.

It was true. His son hadn't let the injury hold him back. Dr. Gregory House was the best at what he did. He was a world renowned diagnostician. He may not understand his son but John understood respect when he saw it and he knew the doctors who cared for his son respected him.

Respect and two bucks would buy you a cup of coffee just about anywhere. What the hell good was respect when what they needed was answers? Was his son's brain working? Could they stop the pain? Would his son ever be able to practice medicine again? Would he walk? Talk? Wipe his own ass?

Suddenly John found he was fighting back tears. If this were an enemy position he would know exactly what to do. He would carpet bomb the bastards. He wanted to help Greg. What could a father do in a situation like this?

It had been decades since he had had anything like a relationship with his only child. Greg worked hard to keep his mother carefully managed; not too distant to hurt her, not close enough to have to deal with his father in any meaningful way. His mother understood him. The whole thing just angered John. In the moments when he was being honest with himself, John knew that he wasn't the kind of man who could tell a son what he felt. His wife had understood. Greg never had. Part of him blamed his son for refusing to understand and part of him blamed himself. He hadn't been the perfect father. Well who gave a good goddamn? He had tried. He was never one of those piss-ant bastards who ran off on his family.

Now, with the reality of everything he had found out – the leg, saving the young woman and her boy, the respect Greg received from colleagues – John wondered if his son hadn't made the right decision where he was concerned. His son was a man to be proud of. Maybe keeping away from a father that couldn't tell him the things that was in his heart was the right thing for Greg to have done.

Mentally shaking himself, John wiped away any moisture from his face. There was one reality that was as sure as shit. Greg didn't need a father who wasn't dealing with the situation head on. John would keep the doctors on their toes, make them give the best they had for his son, and make sure – if God saw fit to give him a chance – to tell his son at the earliest opportunity how proud he was of him.

* * *

Blythe sat with Dorothy and Bobby's grandmother, Elaine. Elaine was a sweet woman, fifteen years her junior, and very worried about her grandson. Both Elaine and Dorothy had thanked her for being there. 

The truth was that Blythe needed to be there. This boy and his mother were the reason that Greg was injured. Somehow she felt like she was helping Greg by being here, by doing the thing she could do. She wasn't a physician like her son. She didn't understand the condition the boy suffered from. From everything she was able to gather neither did the doctors who had taken over the case for Greg. They were doing what they felt they needed to and that would have to be enough.

A silent expectation had fallen between the women as they waited to hear the outcome of the surgery on Bobby's ear. In the quiet, Dorothy and Elaine prayed for the fate of a small boy and Blythe prayed for the fate of a small boy and her grown son.

* * *

The grey-blackness was comforting. He knew he was still in pain but the pain was a distant reality.Here, in this unplace, he had distance and, he realized in a bizarre twist of the fates, perspective. 

'You do have people who give a damn. So what do you do? Push the people who care away.'

He knew his father and mother were near. And Wilson. There were others – Cuddy, Cameron, Chase, even Foreman. People who gave a damn. Weird – but what about life wasn't.

What was it Rebecca Adler had asked him? 'Did you think you were dying?'

His answer had been immediate. 'I hoped I was dying.'

The question he now had to answer was the same. Was this life – his life, the people in his life, weird or not, worth the pain? He had thought so. Did he still think so?

He had said once that the reason he pushed people away was because they were boring. That was a lie. Everybody lies. Even he did.


	17. Chapter 17

Apologies for the delay in posting the last few parts. For some reason the going for these are tough going. Please bear with me. Thanks again to Allie for her wonderful work betareading.

As always, your continued feedback is very much welcomed.

Seeing is Believing (Part 17)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

The leading news story the next morning was the details of the arrest of one of the suspects in the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital robbery. The suspect had been treated for an overdose at Trenton County General Hospital after being found unconscious. The police were waiting for medical clearance to interrogate the suspect and hopefully find out more about the circumstances of the robbery, whether this potentially was the one who fired the gun, and if they could discover the whereabouts of the other robbery suspect.

James wondered as he watched the remaining news without listening if the robber who shot House had any idea what kind of damage he had done. For the past several days James could not walk past House's office without stopping to go inside. The absence of his friend was a physical thing for him. The office was filling with well wishes from all over the country, from people who didn't understand that these tokens of human communication were the last thing House would want. And James really wanted nothing more than to hear House grumble about it all. That would mean that House was not just alive but well.

On the corner of his own desk he had collected a small stack of items to take to House as soon as they would be needed. A new book of Sudoku puzzles, a favorite pastime. His reading glasses were there too - the nameless faceless well-wishers wouldn't know that House needed them. On top of these were the two new journals that had been delivered to House's mailbox at the hospital on Monday. The last two items were his friend's PSP, a rare gift from an even rarer patient, and Robert Damron's updated chart.

He hoped that today would be day House would need all of them.

* * *

Bobby woke up on and off throughout the night to find his mother and grandmother at his bedside. Dorothy and Elaine took turns staying awake to make sure the boy always had someone to communicate with should he need to. The effects of the anesthesia would make him pretty sleepy for most of the morning but nearly all of the discomfort should be gone. There would be residual soreness from the surgery but the painful pressure in the ear was eliminated by the removal of the mass. 

Robert Chase had pulled the short straw and had spent the night at the hospital to make sure there weren't any complications with the patient after the surgery. The mass they had removed appeared to be a cholesteatoma. Pathology of the entire mass was still pending. Because cholesteatomas aren't vascular the patient's hemolytic anemia hadn't resulted in cerebral hemorrhage. The boy was extremely lucky. If the mass had been infected and there had been any significant bleeding the child would have died. Because House suspected there was something wrong and had admitted him the problem was found before a life-threatening complication could occur.

House strikes again, Robert thought as he read through the post-operative report one last time before signing it and placing it on the chart. There were still things that they needed to deal with, though. Giving Bobby platelets before the surgery had prevented hemorrhage but didn't solve the ongoing problem. What was causing the anemia? The cholesteatoma didn't explain the thrombocytopenia or the lymphocyte abnormalities they had found.

Robert looked through the library of texts House kept in the department conference room until he found what he was looking for. Wintrobe's Clinical Hematology text was a logical starting place to look for causes of hemolytic anemia. Despite the positive surgical outcome, all of the doctors caring for Bobby Damron knew House would be far from done with the case. There were still pieces of the puzzle missing and even though the ear pain that had brought the patient to the clinic on that fateful day had been addressed the puzzle wasn't solved.

Allison Cameron and Eric Foreman found Chase sitting at House's bedside early that morning still pouring over the text when they arrived. They understood, as Robert did, that if House were directing the team he would tell them all that there was still work to be done.

* * *

By midday the MRI of House's right thigh and the PET scan of his brain had been completed and House was back in his hospital bed in ICU. His parents sat in the room as six doctors stood outside in the hallway discussing their options. Dr.s Faxton, Wilson, Cameron, Foreman, Chase, and Cuddy were all concerned about the same thing – House's pain. 

The MRI showed that there was some minor axonal damage to the thigh; most likely a result of the violent twisting House had done to close the exam room door. When compared to the MRI done earlier that year by Wilson the amount of new damage wouldn't account for the degree of pain House was experiencing, which was the most disturbing finding of all. The PET scan clearly showed significant increased activity in House's temporal-thalamic region. There was no doubt about the fact that he was in significant pain but what was causing it?

"It could be some form of bone pain," James Wilson offered. "Bone pain is the hardest to alleviate."

"What would be causing the bone pain? He doesn't have cancer or Paget's disease," Allison Cameron countered.

Brad Faxton nodded his agreement. "And the axonal damage is too minimal to account for the leg pain."

"What if it isn't leg pain?" Robert Chase suggested.

Everyone looked at him but it was Lisa Cuddy who spoke. "You saw what happened yesterday. The amount of upper body thrashing he did proved that any pain he was having from the thoracic surgery wasn't slowing him down any. What else could it be?"

"I know his pain is being sensed in his leg," Robert continued calmly, "but what if the pain isn't coming from his leg?"

It was Eric Foreman who caught on first, "You mean referred pain."

"Exactly," Robert said.

Eric was nodding. "That makes sense. Chronic pain can physically change the nervous system in ways that make the pain worse and last longer. The sensing system gets rerouted. The pain could be coming from the bullet wound and he could be feeling it in his leg."

"That much pain?" Lisa asked.

"It's cumulative," James said. "The discomfort from the old leg wound, the new chest wound, and the additional axonal damage in his thigh all add up to one huge increase in the level of pain he's experiencing."

"So what do we do about it?" Dr. Faxton asked.

For a moment the conversation lagged. Each physician thought the same thing but it was Lisa who finally made the suggestion. "What about ketamine?"

James knew someone would suggest this and was ready with his response. "No," he shook his head. "We can't do that to him again."

"Just because it didn't work fully the last time doesn't mean…."

James didn't let Lisa finish. "The ketamine treatment failed and it nearly cost him his career. Do you really want to take the chance that something like that might happen again?"

"But what if it's successful?" Lisa wasn't ready to give up on the possibility.

"Why does it have to be a ketamine coma?" Throughout the previous exchange Allison had only been half-listening. Ketamine might be the answer but not in the way Cuddy was suggesting.

"What do you mean?" James asked. Cameron had his and everyone else's attention.

"We give him intramuscular injections in all the muscles surrounding the bullet wound and the original infarction site in his thigh. The ketamine will work locally at the trigger points and at the relay points for his pain," she explained. "Afterwards we can repeat the PET scan to see if there is any change in his perception of pain. If the result is improved it should be safe to wake him."

Dr. Faxton looked from face to face. He could see that the group liked this idea as much as he did. "Anyone else think this is our best bet besides me?" There were nods all around. "Good," he replied, "I think we need to explain it to his parents and get started with the injections."

"Nice job." James said this last to Cameron as he, Cuddy, and Dr. Faxton moved to enter House's ICU room to speak with John and Blythe.

Allison gave him a small smile in reply. For the first time in days they all felt like there was some light at the end of the tunnel.


	18. Chapter 18

Seeing is Believing (Part 18)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

By noon Bobby Damron was sitting up and taking small mouthfuls of the soup his mother fed him from his lunch tray. He didn't complain of pain but did tell her that his ear itched. Dr. Cameron had said this was normal after surgery, so Dorothy wasn't concerned. What she felt was relief.

Bobby was doing better, and Dr. Cameron had told her the Dr. House was stable now as well. Dorothy was hoping to get another chance to see him before Bobby was discharged.

* * *

Brad Faxton worked with Beth, House's nurse for the day, to pull the last of the two chest tubes House had needed to keep his lungs inflated. House had done well on waterseal throughout the afternoon and his lung function had continued to improve without suction, so it made sense to pull the tube before attempting to wake him again. Brad debated whether or not to extubate him as well. He worried about anxiety generated hypoxia and felt it would be better to see how much of House still remained in his patient before removing the endotracheal tube.

Because of what had happened the first time he had awakened this patient, Brad decide to keep the room quiet – no one would be present other than him, House's nurse, and Wilson. Cuddy would wait with House's parents outside, and House's old team would wait in the hall, just in case. Brad also took the extra precaution of having the nurse restrain both of House's arms with wrist restraints until he was sure they wouldn't be treated to a repeat of last time.

Not that he was too concerned. The second PET scan had shown a marked decrease in temporal-thalamic region activity. Everything suggested that the ketamine injections were working, but he wouldn't really know until he could actually talk to his patient. Brad was a show-me kind of guy, so he wasn't going to bet the farm just yet.

House's last dose of lorazepam had been over six hours ago. With a serum half-life of 12 to 15 hours, Brad and Wilson decided to give House a nudge to wake up – they gave him a small dose of flumazenil to produce a partial antagonist effect for the benzodiazepine. The flumazenil worked very quickly. It was show-me time.

Wilson did the honors. "House? House, open your eyes."

* * *

The grey-black receded. He could hear a voice. Familiar. Wilson. The decision made, he felt no need to hesitate.

* * *

"House!"

The first attempt to open his eyes failed, but he was able to turn his head slightly toward the sound of Wilson's voice.

"Come on, House."

He felt like the effort to open his eyes was Herculean. Once he got his eyes open he was hard pressed to bring any portion of what he saw into focus. He wanted to rub his eyes but couldn't get his hands to his face. He settled for blinking a few times.

Finally two faces seemed to materialize out of the haze. Wilson he knew. The other was a face he couldn't immediately place.

"Welcome back," Wilson's face said. He tried to tell the face to stop swimming but he couldn't make a sound. It was the other face that spoke next.

"You're still intubated, so you can't speak. You've had a rough go of it for the past few days. Are you in any pain right now? Nod yes or no."

He didn't hurt. Not really. He was stiff and sore, but the tremendous pain he had feared was not present. He shook his head no.

The face continued, "You were shot while on duty in the clinic. Do you remember that?"

House scowled. He was shot? He tried to remember. His leg had hurt like hell. They wanted the drugs. Two of them. Both were detoxing. The door to the exam room opened. Then, he was on the floor. Cuddy was scared. Someone said 'He's be shot.' and 'Oh, God' was all Cuddy could manage. As if God had anything to do with it….

"Do you remember?" Wilson asked.

He nodded and was rewarded with a visible look of relief on Wilson's face.

The other face told him about the complications he suffered since the shooting. His name was Dr. Faxton. This rang a bell and House knew he had been assigned to the Chief of Trauma Services by Cuddy. Faxton proceeded to put him through a series of tests: wiggling the toes on his left foot, adding four and three on his fingers, taking a deep breath and holding it, lifting his head off the bed. All were designed to determine his mental status and readiness for extubation. With passing grades on all fronts House heard what he wanted to hear.

"Let's get that ET tube out of there."

* * *

Allison waited in the hallway outside the ICU room with Robert and Eric. As they waited and watched, hoping that House would turn out to be all right, all of their beepers went off.

* * *

As soon as the ET tube was removed the nurse placed a humidified oxygen mask on his face. The mist felt soothing in his dry mouth. He had to clear his throat a few times before he could say anything coherent. He found the sound of his own voice startling for its weakness. "How long?"

"Since the robbery?" Wilson clarified.

House nodded.

"Four days."

"My patient?"

Wilson knew this would be the first priority for House. "We have a well trained team of doctors working on the case." Wilson nodded to the three people looking in through the glass walls of House's ICU room.

House turned his head to look out into the hallway where Wilson indicated. He was surprised but not too surprised. It made sense that Cuddy would ask them.

* * *

As soon as they saw him look their way, they all moved into the room. It was Robert who spoke first. "You look better."

House didn't acknowledge the comment. "How's my patient?"

Allison smiled. She had expected nothing else from her old boss.

"We found a cholesteatoma in the left tympanic space," Foreman told him. "We removed it yesterday."

House scrutinized his face. The other two he would expected to say yes when Cuddy asked them. Foreman wasn't expected. "That's not all you found," he told them. It wasn't a question.

Foreman was all business. "No. He has hemolytic anemia."

"There are some lymphocytic abnormalities of his T- and B-cells but we his ANA is normal," Cameron added. "It's autoimmune but none of the tests have indicated what kind."

House looked to Chase. He knew there was more.

"We gave him platelets before the surgery to prevent hemorrhage, but that was only a temporary fix," Chase informed him.

"And?" House prompted.

"We were just paged. He's developed hematuria. The anemia is getting worse."

"So," Foreman finished for the team, "we found and fixed the cause of the pain in his ear but we still don't know what's causing the anemia."

They had done well. They were only missing a small piece to the puzzle. If he was right the patient would do just fine. "Have you checked the skin on the back of the legs?"

Wilson, Foreman, Cameron, Chase, and Brad Faxton looked each from one to the other. This question didn't seem to make sense. They all were wondering the same thing. Was House really all there?

House saw the confusion and guessed what they were thinking. "Where is the most common place for eczema in a boy his age?"

Cameron answered. "The creases of the limb joints. But what has that…"

"Like the back of the legs behind the knees," House interrupted.

Chase was nodding as he began to understand. "And eczema would make sense if he had Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome."

House nodded his agreement. "Check his blood cells for decreased WAS protein."

"We should also check for mutations to the WASP gene," Cameron added.

House shook his head and closed his eyes. Damn, he was tired. This differential diagnosis needed to end soon. "Takes too long for definitive treatment," he said slowly. "Look at his platelets on a slide."

Now Foreman was catching on as well. "A computer analysis doesn't report the size of the platelets. If he does have WAS they would be smaller than normal."

"If we're right we can do a spenectomy to correct the anemia," Chase finished.

Brad Faxton could see how fatigued the conversation was making his patient. He had to admit he was impressed as hell. House had just been awakened after a major injury and he was nailing a diagnosis and directing care. The son-of-a-bitch was one hell of a doctor. Still, it was time to end the consultation. "Time for my patient to rest."

Chase, Cameron, and Foreman nodded. Cameron touched him gently on the arm. "We're all glad you're better."

House simply nodded. He closed his eyes again. It simply took too much energy to keep them open. He was asleep almost immediately.

As the three physicians who made up his old and now new team turned to leave they were met by three other individuals: Cuddy, House's mom and House's dad.


	19. Chapter 19

My apologies for taking so long to update this story. Real Life (tm) has been distracting me a bit too much of late. As always your comments and feedback are appreciated.

Cheers!

Seeing is Believing (Part 19)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

"He has had a rash there his whole life," Dorothy told Dr. Cameron, avoiding using the word 'eczema' because she was unsure how to pronounce it. "His doctor gave us bath oil to use and some cream for times when the rash is bad. It has been controlled lately, though."

Allison had looked at the skin behind Bobby's knees and found, just as House predicted, the telltale signs of eczema. The issue was trying to explain the relationship of the eczema to the cholesteatoma and both of those to a genetic disorder Mrs. Damron had likely never heard of. If House was right and the WAS protein was isolated -- something Robert and Foreman were trying to do at the moment -- then more definitive treatment could be offered. For now the challenge was to try and stop all bleeding. If Bobby was bleeding into his bladder as the hematuria suggested, then the chances of a cerebral bleed so recently after surgery was a real possibility.

"This kind of rash, eczema, is common in boys who have Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome," Allison continued after she finished her examination of Bobby's legs. "The most common symptoms are the ones we've seen so far, but there could be other complications if we don't treat him for the disorder."

Dorothy looked at her son, who had returned to pretending that his Ultimate Bumblebee could really fly. "And this syndrome," she said slowly not taking her eyes off her boy, "he got it from me?"

This was the reason Allison wanted to be the one to tell Mrs. Damron. The last thing a mother needed was to feel guilty for possessing a gene she would have no way of knowing she carried and was only expressed in males. "It is carried on the X chromosome," she said. "The X chromosome is given by the mother."

Tears began to roll silently down Dorothy's face. She didn't try to stop them. First she had given her son her deafness and now she had given him some disease that could kill him.

Allison laid her hand gently on Mrs. Damron's arm. Dorothy looked her in the eyes. "There is no way you could have known about this gene," Allison explained. "Your mother told me that Bobby is her first grandson."

Dorothy nodded. "That's right."

"And your mother had only one sister and no brothers." Dorothy nodded again.

"Then there hasn't been a male family member who could have had this disease since your grandfather's generation. If there were symptoms you wouldn't have known about them."

Dorothy understood that Dr. Cameron was trying to make her feel better. She just wasn't certain it mattered. She had done this to her son and now Bobby might bleed to death even though they had found the mass in his ear and removed it. She had feared something was really wrong with Bobby, that's why she had brought him to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. But she had never dreamed of something like this. She supposed no one does.

"So what do we do now?" Dorothy asked, not wanting to be reassured anymore.

Allison dropped her hand away. "We'll treat him for the bleeding and wait to see what the tests tell us."

Dorothy's tears continued as she accepted this news. The hospital seemed an odd place when everything she had ever known had been defined by her deafness. Trust was hard. She agreed to trust Dr. House on that fateful day. She had learned to trust the doctors who took over for him. She would never have thought that what she couldn't trust was inside of her.

* * *

Eric spoke while looking through the microscope. "The platelets are only 75 percent normal size. A lot of them aren't matured." 

Chase, who was working to isolate Bobby's proteins from his serum plasma, nodded. "House nailed it." He stopped what he was doing, holding the mechanical pipette in midair. "I have to admit that I miss that."

Looking up from the microscope, Eric met Chase's eyes. "I don't," he said matter-of-factly.

"You think we would have figured it out?" Chase challenged.

"Yeah, eventually."

"But maybe not before the kid suffered another hemorrhage."

"So that makes everything House does okay? The fact that he came up with the diagnosis faster than we did?"

Robert didn't think that Foreman would ever change, but he wasn't going to let the subject drop before making one more point. "No. The fact that he suspected it after doing a simple exam in the clinic and that his admitting the boy probably saved his life and bought us the time to discover the real problem -- that's what makes House the best."

"It didn't keep him from firing you," Foreman shot back.

"Firing me doesn't change anything," Robert replied as he returned to the task at hand. "It only means that his opportunities to treat me as an employee have come to an end. I'm not arrogant enough to think I still don't have a lot to learn from him."

He stared at Chase for another moment. Eric was beginning to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake in resigning. He wasn't about to admit that to Chase or anyone for that matter. House had a lot to offer. But, he reminded himself; House was still the world's biggest ass.

* * *

James turned the corner of the hallway that led to House's ICU room. He could see that Lisa Cuddy was standing just outside, looking into the room. Cuddy's face was filled with an odd mixture of sentimental sadness. He thought he understood. Cuddy was a bit of a romantic. She liked happy endings. For House, a meeting with his parents was bound to be anything but. 

"He's awake?"

Lisa startled slightly at the sound of Wilson's voice. She hadn't been aware that anyone had approached her.

"I'm sorry," Wilson began, "I didn't mean to…."

"It's fine," she interrupted his apology a bit hastily. She felt like she had been caught in too voyeuristic an attitude. "I was just thinking."

Her tone told him she was embarrassed. Wilson tried to hide a smile by turning to look through the glass wall of the ICU room. "So, he's awake?" he repeated.

As Lisa turned to follow his gaze back into the room, she caught sight of the reason for Wilson's visit. He had a small collection of personal items for House under his arm. "Yes," she informed him, "about five minutes ago."

They looked on for several seconds more before she continued. "Dr. Faxton has weaned him down to a nasal cannula and his pain is still under control. If he continues to improve he'll be able to move out of ICU tomorrow."

"Good news for the press and the board," James replied still smiling. He regretted saying it almost immediately. Cuddy looked stricken.

"And for his friends," he added more gently as he gave her a sidelong look and saw that relief seemed to wash over her at this last.

"Yes," she said softly.

James wondered what these past few days must have been like for her. Cuddy had to deal with all the problems of the hospital, not just those that seemed to be generated by House. The robbery had raised serious questions about the hospital's security procedures, and that meant that Cuddy was on the hot seat. He didn't envy her.

"You do realize that none of this was your fault." He kept his voice down, but he gave this comment a firm edge. The last thing Cuddy needed was a guilty conscience.

She didn't look at him but continued to watch the conversation in House's room. "I insisted that he work in the clinic on Saturdays. I thought that if I made him work a little harder I could convince him to start interviewing fellowship candidates," she told him. "He needs a team."

Wilson nodded. "You're right, he does." This brought her gaze around to his. "There was no way for you to know what was going to happen," he said. "What House did to save the Damrons, the complications afterward, the pain – none of it could be anticipated."

"I know," Lisa confessed. "I just can't get what he said to me while he was lying in a pool of his own blood out of my head."

"What, about letting you cut off his leg?" James asked.

She could only nod. The look on her face was almost haunted. "He was struggling for every breath and all he could talk about was his leg."

"Or maybe it was just House's version of gallows humor," he offered.

"While he was on the gallows?" she said incredulously.

James looked in at his friend. "The House I know wouldn't let a little thing like a bullet keep him from stating the outrageous."

That brought a small grin to Lisa's face. "I suppose you're right."

"And there's always the mileage he's going to try to get out of this whole situation in an attempt to escape clinic duty."

Her grin spread into a wry smile. "He can try."


	20. Chapter 20

Seeing is Believing (Part 20)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

"Wilson shouldn't have called," he insisted.

"Don't you be upset with him," Blythe told her son. "We would have found out about it anyway."

"It was all over the TV," John added.

He wasn't sure he understood. "What was all over the TV? The robbery?"

"That," John explained, "and the video."

Now he was more confused then ever. "What video?"

"It was one of those candid camera things," his mother told him, "just like on those programs that show how the police sometimes catch criminals in the act. Someone at the clinic used their cellular phone to capture the robbery."

"The last portion of it, anyway," John continued. "The video was played on all the national news programs. Dr. Cuddy told us it was even on the internet."

Closing his eyes, House silently groaned.

His mother's voice continued excitedly, "She says that the hospital has received get well letters and cards for you from all over the country. There's even a note from the governor. Everyone recognizes what a brave thing you did…"

"Mom," he looked at her.

"… and everyone just wants you to know …"

"Mom."

"…how proud they are of you."

"I didn't do anything. I never had a chance to even think," he insisted. He didn't know what to say - to explain to his mother that what had happened had nothing to do with him at all. Biological imperative, protect the next generation – that was all this was. There was such love and pride in her face. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her but he needed to make her understand. "There was no bravery involved."

"Like hell there wasn't," this came from his dad who was standing by the window. "I've seen men respond in just about every possible way there is to respond in the heat of combat. What a man does under fire says more about him than all the words that could ever come out of his mouth."

House watched as his father looked away briefly, nervously. He wanted to stop this before it could go any farther. He wasn't sure how. His father didn't really give him a chance as he continued.

"Nothing can change the fact that you saved the lives of a woman and her child," John said, a slight huskiness in his voice that hadn't been there a moment before. "Your first instinct was to save them. You risked your life to do it. People ought to be proud of you. I sure the hell am."

House looked at his father with open surprise on his face. Seconds ticked away as father and son dealt with their individual emotions. John wondered if his son would believe him. For House, the suddenness of the confession warred with his own memories of too many hurtful accusations of his inadequacies to hold any truth. A part of him wanted to believe his father but that part was rapidly drowned by too lengthy a history for one simple declaration to erase.

"We both are," his mother said, recognizing how awkward the moment had become between the two men in her life.

Grateful for her words, House finally looked away from his father to give her the barest of smiles. There was no use arguing about it anyway.

The glass door to his ICU room opened, and John turned quickly to look out of the window at the grey sky. It looked like it was going to rain for the second time that day.

"Mind if I come in?" James Wilson asked. He stopped after sticking his head into the room. There was significant tension and he didn't want to intrude. He would let House cue him.

"You shouldn't have called them," was House's greeting.

James smiled as he recognized that his arrival was welcomed. Same old House. And thank God for that. It wasn't that long ago that everyone worried that his mind wasn't intact anymore. Granted, there were portions of House's personality James felt he could do without on a daily basis but, House being House, this was as close to normal any of them was going to get. "I'm glad to see you're feeling better."

"Don't listen to him," Blythe told Wilson, turning in her chair to offer her son's best friend a welcoming smile.

"I try not to," James told her as he approached her chair by House's bedside.

"Conformist," House accused, giving Wilson a small nod. He let his mother grasp his hand to silently try to control him and glanced briefly over at his father, who was still staring out of the window. Was this the way families were? He guessed, for Dr. Gregory House, it was.

* * *

The lights in Bobby Damron's room were dimmed. The boy slept, his head bandaged from his surgery and an I.V. line infusing fluids into a central line that had been placed in his right subclavian vein. In the chair next to the bed sat the mother. She was resting with her arms and head leaned forward onto the boy's hospital bed. The faces of mother and child were just inches apart. 

The chart sitting open in his lap, House sat in his wheelchair and watched them sleep. It was just after midnight. His patient was scheduled for the splenectomy in the morning. Dr. Woods was the surgeon and, to House's surprise, Dr. Chase was scheduled to assist. The test results for the level of WAS protein proved House was right about the boy. His team had figured out that the ear pain wasn't an infection and gotten the boy the treatment that saved his life. Removing the spleen was only prophylactic to alleviate severe and protracted anemia and help correct the thrombocytopenia. With some medication and close follow up, the boy should be fine.

He watched them sleep.

"You saved his life," a familiar voice said from just behind him.

He attempted to turn to look over his shoulder but was brought up short. He was getting used to the feeling of a pulling behind his right scapula. However, stretching the surgical incision was still painful. He heard rather than saw her move to the side of the wheelchair.

"House," Lisa Cuddy said, "be careful. You don't want to rip your sutures."

Reaching his left hand around his chest to apply pressure to his sore chest incision, House winced slightly and said "What are you doing here at this hour? Have they started scheduling board meetings at night? I always knew board members were blood suckers, but I was prepared to swear vampirism was a myth."

Lisa ignored him and leaned down to look at his surgical dressing. She pulled his hand away gently to get a better look. "There's no bleeding," she told him as he slowly sat back against the back of the wheelchair. "But you shouldn't be out of ICU."

Their eyes met for the first time. Lisa wanted to make certain House was okay, that his pain level was under control, and House wanted to just see her face. He gave her his most doctorly look. "I'm rounding on my patient," he informed her.

She was incredulous, "It's nearly 2 o'clock in the morning."

"The lines are shorter at this hour."

"How did you get down here?"

"Pixie dust."

God, she had missed him – missed the verbal sparring and the sarcasm. She was so glad he was doing well, recovering. He was still an ass, but she was glad he was okay. He was, after all, an ass on her staff.

"You still haven't answered my question," House continued. He could see the relief in her face. He knew Cuddy would feel guilty about the robbery and his injuries. It was stupid for her to feel that guilt, but it had been his experience that just because something was irrational and stupid didn't keep Deans of Medicine from feeling them. Especially this Dean of Medicine. "What are YOU doing here at nearly 2 o'clock in the morning?"

Lisa looked up to see what House had been staring at. Mrs. Damron and her son were asleep. "The nurses called me to tell me you were insisting on seeing your patient's chart even though they informed you that Dr. Foreman is on call tonight."

House looked behind her to glower slightly in the general direction of the nurse's station. He had had to convince two groups of nurses that he was still a doctor at PPTH. First, the nurses in the ICU unit where he was a patient weren't going to let him out of his room until he had promised to use a wheelchair and allow one of them to push him to the pediatric unit, and then the nurses on Pediatrics weren't going to let him see his patient's chart. It wasn't until he had threatened to out to the state nursing board the hospital pool concerning whether he would live or die that he got the cooperation he needed. Of course he hadn't been certain there was a betting pool concerning his survival until his threat, but he had suspected as much.

"He's going to be all right."

House returned his attention to Cuddy. Her statement wasn't really a question.

"Yes," he told her.

"Thanks to you," she said softly.

"Thanks to my team," he said.

Lisa looked back at him. "Your old team."

House met her gaze.

She continued, "They were gracious enough to help when you were," she paused for a moment to think about how to proceed, "unable to," she said slowly, "and after tomorrow they will be returning to their lives and practices. Practices that are not here," she finished.

House didn't say anything. This boy was damned lucky Cameron, Chase, and Foreman had agreed to take over the case. He didn't really want to speculate what would have happened if they hadn't. Of course, he knew that Cuddy meant he needed a team. He didn't agree. The patient had needed the team.

"No," he said quietly but firmly. They both knew that he was talking about rehiring them.

"You just said that they were responsible for Bobby's…."

"They are," House interrupted. "But the case is solved."

"You need a team." "I don't need a team." They said it at the same time.

House leaned his face into his hand in exasperation and slight fatigue. Cuddy put a hand on her hip. It was the old argument back again. "Can this wait until I can limp away from you on my own two feet?" House asked after a moment's silence.

Lisa regarded him, looking him deep in the eyes. He really didn't want a team. Why, she might not ever understand. He was also tiring rapidly. "I'll take you back to your room," she said softly and reached to grab the handles of the wheelchair.

They both knew the argument wasn't over. Lisa Cuddy and Greg House would be a part of each other's lives for some time to come. There were reasons to both rue and welcome that little bit of reality for either of them.


	21. Epilog

I cannot finish posting this story without saying, once again, thank you to my betareaders: Allie and Gail. Without the people who are willing to critique the work it wouldn't be nearly as gratifying to write as well as to read. Also, thanks to everyone who took the time to post reviews. As always, the feedback is most welcome.

Cheers!

Seeing is Believing (Epilog)

House, M.D.

by Cheers

The clinic had been busy. He hated clinic duty. He also understood why he had to do it. Understanding didn't make the mind-numbing boredom any easier to tolerate. The only good thing that had come out of the clinic robbery the month before was that his stints of clinic duty had been dropped from full days to two hours. He was nearing the one hour forty-five minute mark. Only a quarter of an hour to go.

Sighing, House pulled the chart out of the wall bracket and entered Exam Room 2. He was surprised by what awaited him inside.

"Dr. House," Dorothy Damron said. "Greg," his mother added rising and moving forward to give him a small hug and a kiss on the cheek. Bobby looked up at him from his position on the exam table and smiled.

"Mom," House said surprised. "What are you doing here? I thought you and dad had gone back home."

"We had, dear," she said turned so that Dorothy could see her face as she spoke. "But you know that your father always goes to the reunion of this old Marine unit this time of year and, well, I promised Mrs. Damron that I'd check on how Bobby was doing. When she said she was going to bring him in for a follow up visit in your clinic, I thought I'd come along as well."

House looked at Bobby again. His color was better and he looked to be pain free.

As if reading his mind Dorothy said, "His ear does not bother him at all, now." He looked in her face and saw the happiness behind her eyes. She had made the right decision to bring her son to Princeton-Plainsboro and to trust the medicine practiced here. That decision had probably saved her son's life.

Nodding, House moved to collect the otoscope from its wall bracket and watched as Bobby tilted his head for the exam. He wondered again at the boy's acceptance of the examination. "Good," he said as he leaned in to look at his patient's left ear canal and the structure beyond.

"I'm off duty after this, Mom" he said to his mother without looking up. "You want to go have dinner somewhere?"

Blythe smiled. "I'd like that very much."

House stood up and moved to look at the other ear, not because he thought he'd find anything there, but out of habit - never just one ear, always both. When he was done he returned the otoscope. "What about the eczema?" House said looking at Bobby's chart then at Dorothy to make certain she was seeing him speak.

"The rash has been controlled with the cream Dr. Cameron prescribed." Dorothy told him.

"Any problems or questions about his medication?"

Dorothy shook her head. "No."

"Well," House said, making a quick note in the chart and closing it, "his ear looks fine and his anemia is better. He won't need to come back here after today. His pediatrician should be able to follow him from now on."

"That's good news," Blythe House said, grasping Dorothy on the arm and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"Thank you, Dr. House," Dorothy said as she ran her hand over Bobby's head to smooth down the hair that was just now getting long enough to require a cut after having it shaved off for surgery. "We," she looked up at House, "we owe you everything."

"You don't owe…"

"Greg," his mother said quietly.

House paused. House looked from Dorothy to his mother and then back again. He didn't want to be thanked. He could see that Mrs. Damron was about to erupt. She was going to thank him for saving their lives the day of the robbery. Not only didn't he want the thanks, he didn't want to have to deal the with the emotion of the moment. The latter much more than the former.

Blythe knew what was going through her son's mind. She saw it in his eyes. "She needs to say thank you," she told him. "And you need to accept it," she added.

He looked at his mother. Her gaze was direct and her countenance stern. He sighed and dropped his head slightly. "You're welcome," he said to Mrs. Damron.

Dorothy knew it was not something Dr. House would have said had his mother not been there. She felt she understood. She had come to know Dr. House in a different way from the other staff members at the hospital. She had come to know him as his own mother knew him – one mother to another. She stepped up to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek as his mother had done only a few minutes before. She turned and reached her hand out to Bobby, who hopped off the exam table and took her hand. They moved to the door and paused before going through. Bobby signed something to his mother and she shook her head yes and then nodded toward House.

Turning, Bobby walked up to Dr. House and extended his hand. In a voice that was thick, ill-practiced, and almost unintelligible he said "Tang chu."

House stared at the boy for a moment in wonder and then took his hand. "You're welcome," he said again. Bobby let go and returned to his mother. House watched as they left the room. For reasons he wasn't quite sure he understood, he was embarrassed.

"We can ask Wilson to join us," he said to his mother as they left the exam room together, making certain the conversation would not turn to the Damron's again.

"I already have," she said without hesitation and she smiled as she saw the surprise on her son's face out of the corner of her eye. She was proud of him. The whole world was proud of him … whether he liked it or not. Right now, she would settle for spending some time with him. Perhaps he would get used to the thanks. She doubted it, but the small smile that replaced his initial surprise gave her some hope.

FIN


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